NY Times: The Case for No Helmets

June 17, 1995

The Case for No Helmets

By Dick Teresi

Dick Tersi is editor of VQ, a magazine about Harley-Davidson motorcycles

It's time for the nation's oldest bike festival. This weekend, 150,000 motorcycle enthusiasts have converged on Laconia, N.H., for the Laconia Motorcycle Rally. Ah, the joys of motorcycling! The throaty roar of your V-twin engine, the call of the open road, the wind in your hair . . . .

Wait. Forget about that last part. The riders en route to Laconia won't feel any wind in their hair. They'll just feel the rush of air over their plastic helmets -- at least until they cross into New Hampshire, which doesn't require riders over 18 to wear them.

Forty-seven states have some helmet requirements. At the rally, plenty of T-shirts will deride motorcycle helmet laws. They'll sell well. In a survey of 2,500 bikers at the 1993 rally, 98 percent of the respondents said they opposed such laws. This opposition is often dismissed by nonriders as evidence of bikers' rebelliousness. But we oppose the laws for reasons other than personal freedom. Helmets are not necessarily the life-savers some people think they are. In some cases, they may be killers.

Deep in the plush recesses of any helmet approved by the Department of Transportation is a tiny warning label: "Some reasonably foreseeable impacts may exceed this helmet's capability to protect against severe injury or death." The unspecified "reasonably foreseeable impacts" are any collisions at speeds greater than 15 miles per hour. The department tests the protection provided by helmets by dropping them on an anvil from a height of six feet. This is equivalent to an impact at 14.4 miles per hour. So if you're riding to Laconia, keep your speedometer below 15 miles per hour.

But what about all those statistics purporting to prove that helmets save lives? Some studies indicate that there are fewer motorcycle deaths per one million residents in states with helmet laws than in states where helmets are not mandatory. (The study most cited was made by the Center for Disease Control and covers 1979 to 1986.) But this is largely because there are more riders per capita in states that did not require helmets.

If you take those same statistics and count motorcycle fatality rates per 10,000 registered motorcycles rather than per general population -- a more sensible approach -- you find that nine states without helmet laws had a lower fatality rate (3.05 deaths per 10,000 motorcycles) than those that mandated helmets (3.38).

What about claims that helmet laws reduce deaths caused by head trauma? Jonathan Goldstein, a professor of economics at Bowdoin College, studied crash and injury statistics and found that while helmets might prevent head injuries at very low speeds, they can increase the possibility of neck injuries at high speeds.

This makes sense. The body, like any object under impact, breaks at its weakest point. If a biker wearing a four-pound helmet is thrown to the pavement, the head might be saved but the neck is more likely to snap.

Helmets, especially full-face models, suppress the normal sensations of wind and speed and thus can give riders a false sense of invulnerability and can lead to excessive risk-taking and dangerous riding habits.

The real problem is not uncovered heads. It's that too many bikers don't ride well and too many automobile drivers don't look out for motorcycles. To make motorcycling safer, the nation needs better driver and rider education. A 1988 study by the American Motorcyclist Association, showed that states with good motorcycle education programs and no helmet laws had an average fatality rate of 2.56 deaths per 100 motorcycle accidents while states with helmet laws but no training had a death rate of 3.09 per 100 accidents.

Is there a place for helmets? Sure. Anyone who rides in a car should wear one. Head injuries make up only 20 percent of serious injuries to motorcyclists but are far more common in car accidents. If the state legislators who have passed helmet laws are serious, they ought to prove it by always wearing one in the car. Meanwhile, let motorcyclists feel the wind in their hair.