Helmets and Helmet Laws in the USA

This page has information on helmets and helmet laws, social burden, and motorcycle statistics.  Injury statistics for cars and other accidents are included for comparison to see where the real social burden is.

Helmet Law Updates

May 3, 2000 - repeal of Helmet law passes Senate in Florida.  Requires a $10,000 insurance policy to ride without helmets if 21 and over.  Waiting to be signed into law by the governor.

June 16, 2000 - repeal of Helmet signed by Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida.  Effective July 1.  Motorcyclists 21 and older who carry $10,000 insurance will be allowed to ride without helmets.

Helmet Law Informational Links

Several sites have the helmet laws posted so there is little reason for me to repost them. Here are also several informational sites you should check out. The links below will take you to each.

Truth About Helmets and Motorcycle Statistics

Helmets save lives, just like seat belts do.  Why else would there be rules to have them in racing events for so many years?  However, just because you wear a helmet does not mean you won't be killed.  The speed at which most of us travel is enough to kill us or give us brain damage, regardless of having a helmet or not.  

The Egg in a Box

All helmets are not created equal.  Another fallacy of helmet laws is that you will be safe as long as you have one.  But can anyone with any sense think that a $25 helmet from some general merchandise store give you the same protection as a Shoei, Simpson, or Bell that is specifically designed for racing at speed of 150 to 200 mph?  What causes the brain damage is not ripping into the concrete curb and banging into the sheet metal of a car.  What causes it is the difference in deceleration of the skull and the brain.  Think of your brain in terms of an egg.  The skull is a small cardboard box with a thin layer of foam wrap inside.  If you bounce the box around or set it down too hard, the egg will survive.  If you drop it from the roof onto the concrete driveway, it probably won't.  

The box stops, the egg doesn't, and there is not enough foam wrap to provide the distance needed to slow down without cracking.

The same with your brain.

The purpose of the helmet is like wrapping bubble wrap around the outside of the box.  A little lets it hit from a slightly higher distance and the egg survive.  If you wrap two inches of bubble wrap around the box, you can drop it from even higher and survive.

The $25 helmet is the thin layer of bubble wrap on the outside, the $300 helmet is the two inches of bubble wrap.  It is unless that $300 is a $25 helmet with $250 of paint and graphics.  Not all helmets are made equally, regardless of the Snell sticker.

But even then, you could drop it from a height that two inches of bubble wrap won't protect it.  Or you could have a truck run over it.  The same with your head.  You may be fine at 30 mph or even 50.  But at 70 or 100, you have run out of luck.  You might drop it at 80 and slide for 100 feet, grinding half the helmet away and be fine.  But you could hit straight on a fire hydrant or concrete step or a number of things at 30 and die.  One thing about accidents on a bike, you really can't say as some die on things that look survivable and others walk away from certain death.

Unrealistic Arguments

Most helmets give you plenty of peripheral vision and do not dampen the sounds of other vehicles significantly.  These "anti-helmet law" arguments do not hold up.  They are in your head, not reality.  But it does add mass to your head, which slows your reaction to twisting your head to see and in smaller people, adds to the strain on the neck.  Ironically, most helmet laws that require children to wear them are putting that extra mass on those least capable of handling the strain.

Don't stop now. I'm about to give you real ammo for your battles.  I'd suggest that groups take the time to research the real issues rather than using emotional ones or just whining that "I don't like wearing one" as that won't fly with anyone in power.

If you wish to use this argument, you have to do it right.

Use the argument that helmets are illegal in cars because they restrict visibility and hearing.  

I know, the helmet in the car is a riot. I raced for a long time with helmets in cars. I can only count a couple of times that my vision was impaired and it wasn't due to the helmet, but the wrong mirrors.

And all you have to do is walk through a junkyard to see that head impacts on windshields and side windows are very frequent. This is where a helmet can have a very, very high success rate of saving lives. Yet, they make it illegal.

The law should be equal, or it is discrimination.  If helmets restrict vision and hearing in one, then it must in the other.  If not in one, then not in the other.  As you will see in my social burden comments, helmets should be required in cars as there are a lot more injuries there than motorcycles, by sheer numbers.  And that is social burden, not percentages

.

Real Statistics

Everyone is telling you how terrible it is, all the deaths, all the injuries.  But in all of this, have you ever seen real numbers?  The answer usually is NO!  and if you do see numbers, they mean little as they are not in reference to anything else. Here are some real numbers and some numbers from other accidents so you see how motorcycles stack up.  Then you can see just what is the "social burden".

Disclaimer

Many of the numbers in My Comments are estimates. They are 
based on percentages from the actual numbers given. However, 
since so little information is given, they could be very far off. What 
is needed is better record keeping so that the injuries on motorcycles 
and the injuries on cars, and those from trucks, and from each sport 
can be directly compared.  How many are severe and 
how many are "road rash"?

We don't know.
But the NHTSA comes close to answering that in their 
traffic safety reports.  Read it closely.

Accidental Deaths

There are no percentages here, just numbers.  The reason is that we are talking "social burden", and a burden is not a percentage.  A burden is the actual number of dollars you have to bear as a result.  If one group has 10 in it and 10 die, that is 100 percent, but the actual cost is a lot less than a group that has 100,000 in it and only 1% die, i.e., 1,000.  But politicians and special interest groups like to hide things in statistics and percentages. so that it looks terrible.  The reality is that around 41,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 1998.  Only 2,323 died in motorcycle accidents.  Which one is more of a financial burden on the US?  There were 4,000 drownings.  Should we make swimming and boating illegal to reduce the "social burden"?

One item worth noting is that the government can't even decide how many were injured or died on motorcycles. Of course, these are motorcycle-related, so it could be these numbers include pedestrians, people in over vehicles, and such hit by motorcycles. As such, do we require car passengers and pedestrians to wear helmets as a motorcycle may hit and injure them someday?

Injuries

Social burden?  At 45,000 injuries for motorcycle riders, it is but a small percentage of the injuries that occur in the US.  Even pedestrians outnumber motorcyclists nearly 2 to 1 in injuries.  With 200,000 playground injuries, that is about 4 to 1 more than motorcycles.  

The References

I told you these were facts and not just some gut or emotional ranting.  Here are the references for the above numbers.

1. From the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/data/us9794/Mvmtr.htm

2. From the National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 47, No. 19, June 30, 1999 from the CDC website http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/data/nvs47_19.pdf

3. NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts, 1996: Pedestrians. Washington (DC): National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, 1997.

4. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Facts 1996 Fatalities: Pedestrians. Arlington (VA): IIHS, 1997.

5.  The 1997 Statistics, National Safety Council Accident Facts (Injury Statistics) http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/af8.htm Sept. 25, 1998  

6. The 1998 Statistics, National Safety Council Accident Facts (Injury Statistics) http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/99report.htm Nov. 9, 1999  (IMHO - This page states motor vehicle fatalities dropped 3% from 1997 to 1998 for the second consecutive year, however it says that due to increased speeds with the repeal of the National Speed Limit, total occupant fatalities have increased 6%. Well, which is it?  Going up or going down?)

7. NHTSA 1998 Traffic Safety Report (There is some confusion whether total motorcycle fatalities are 2,284, 2,323, or 2,324, depending on where you are in the report.)

8. Pedestrian Traffic-Related Deaths and Rates Per 100,000  

9. Pedestrians are the second largest population group to die in motor vehicle crashes (motor vehicle occupants are the largest). Pedestrians account for about 13% of motor vehicle-related deaths. See footnote  ^4.

10.  Playground Safety - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control  Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). National Electronic Injury Surveillance System 1990-94. Washington (DC): CPSC. 

11. NHTSA 1996 Motor Vehicle Crash Data http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/www/library/file00049.pdf 

12. US DOT Traffic Safety Facts 1998 - DOT HS 808 953  (Adobe PDF file)

My Opinion on Helmets and Helmet Laws

My opinion is a lot more complicated that those you see that say "helmet laws stink" or "you must wear a helmet or you'll die".  As such, mine takes a bit of reading.

• I think that helmets do more good than harm, in most accidents.
  
• I think helmets do very little above certain speeds, and we usually ride at or above that speed.
• As such, my safety and that of my passenger is from avoiding accidents, not wearing tons of protective gear.
  
• Given a choice, I prefer riding without a helmet.  However, I do wear one when conditions dictate, if not mandated by law.
  
• Helmet wear should be the rider's choice.  Some person 200 miles away, 30 years or more my senior, who has never ridden a bike, is NOT in a position to make a valued judgment on my safety.  
• The sheer numbers of motorcycle accidents makes the social burden argument idiotic. See the numbers above. 
  
• Passing helmet repeals restricted by large insurance policies is the WRONG thing to do, as it enhances the so-called "social burden" theory.  People who do this are not friends of those wanting to ride without helmets.
  
• If it is safe for someone over 21 to ride helmet-less, why is it unsafe for someone under 21?  Isn't this discrimination against voting adult citizens of this country, something that is unconstitutional? 
• Here's a scenario: 35 year old rider with 10 year old passenger.  Rider is safe without a helmet but the passenger isn't. They are on the same motorcycle!  What sense does this law make?  Substitute a 18, 19, and 20 year old passenger and you see the sense doesn't change. But put a 21 year old passenger on and magically, they are safe.
• These age restrictions are ridiculous.  If they can try a 13 year old as an adult for murder, why can't a 13 year old ride without a helmet?  This smacks of the '60s when we could be drafted and die in Vietnam for our country, but couldn't vote or do any other things all adults could do.
  
• In 1991, I took a 9000 mile trip, most of it was without a helmet.  I even rode through Nevada with no helmet.  No injuries, no death, not even a bruise.  The worse thing that happened was finding a place to store the helmet on the rest of my gear.
  
• Having grown up in Illinois, I rode all the time without a helmet.  Well, probably 90% of the time, the rest due to rain, cold, etc. or when I was in Missouri.  In all the years of no helmet law there, multiple generations have grown up, ridden, and raised more to ride.  If it is so unsafe, why aren't they all dead?

How To End Helmet Laws

Want to end them?   I can tell you how, but you won't do it.  It is simple.  You must make it cost the state and the businesses more to keep you in a helmet that it does to let you out of them.

The fastest way would be for everyone to ride for the next month without a helmet.  Everyone, not just 50 of you.  Then all of you go through the court system for each and every ticket.  The $50 or $100 fine would not pay for the hassles it would create.  You would jam up the docket for the next 6 months.  Sure, they would make some money, but it would cost them so much that they would be far in the hole.

For Floridians, it is very simple.  Stop going to Daytona for Bike Week.  All half million of you.  One Bike Week would cost the state and the businesses so much money, they would beg you to ride without a helmet, if it would get you back.  Which is more important; a week of drinking, partying, and a t-shirt or riding without a helmet for ever?  (BTW, the t-shirts are usually half price two weeks later. You can still get one.)

But you won't do it.  Now that the Over 21 law has passed, no one will do anything about eliminating all helmet requirements.

Florida still has a helmet law - anyone under 21 and anyone without insurance. The fight ISN'T over!

For other helmet law states, stop having big motorcycle rallies in your state.  Go to a state without helmet laws and have the rallies there.  Let the state without helmets profit from motels, restaurants, gas stations, and so on.

You are visitor to cruise down Route 66.

Updated 01/27/04