Mandatory Motorcycle Helmet Laws in the Courts and in the Legislatures

This paper reports the results of a legal analysis of mandatory helmet-use legislation. The status of headgear laws at the federal level and in each of the states was determined, and court decisions involving challenges to their constitutionality were collected and analyzed. Helmet-use statutes were first passed by states in 1966. Enactment of such legislation was required of all states the following year; this was the result of a U.S. Department of Transportation regulation including headgear legislation in its mandatory safety program standards. During the decade immediately following the promulgation of the Department of Transportation regulation requiring states to pass mandatory helmet-use statutes, opponents of those laws challenged their constitutionality in court. With a single exception, every state court of last resort that considered the issue upheld motorcycle helmet legislation as constitutional. A large majority of the lower courts that considered the issue likewise upheld their constitutionality. Despite the overwhelming weight of judicial authority upholding headgear laws as a reasonable means of promoting the public interest, courts disagreed as to what that public interest was. Some courts stressed the welfare and unemployment payments as well as other social costs that would be reduced by helmet-use legislation. Other courts, however, chose to rely on a more direct public benefit--namely, the prevention of multivehicle crashes that could result from an unhelmeted motorcyclist being struck by a flying object and losing control of his vehicle. Courts also considered a variety of other challenges--both substantive and procedural--to headgear legislation, and uniformly upheld the legislation against those claims. In 1976, Congress passed legislation specifically prohibiting the Department of Transportation from withholding highway-safety appropriations from states that did not require motorcyclists and passengers aged eighteen and over to wear helmets. Since passage of that provision, some thirty states have repealed entirely or weakened their helmet legislation, and bills dealing with motorcycle headgear are being considered by legislatures in a number of other states. On the other hand, efforts to reinstate or strengthen helmet laws have been reported in states that earlier repealed or limited them. Arguments cited by legislative opponents of helmet legislation include many of those that were raised earlier, without success, in the courts. Those arguments--chief of which is that government should not protect an individual from the consequences of his own folly--possess social and political force; therefore, proponents of mandatory helmet-use legislation must be prepared to face them in the future. Future research into mandatory helmet-use laws should include continued analysis of legislative action on them; it should also attempt to determine the factors that influence legislators' decisions to retain, weaken, or strengthen these laws. Whether states and municipalities may require motorcycle operators and passengers to wear protective headgear is an issue currently being debated in a number of state legislatures. The states have again become the arena of this debate following congressional passage in 1976 of a provision in the Federal Highway Act, which curbed the power of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to penalize states that did not enact mandatory headgear legislation. States still may, however, be subjected to penalties for not requiring persons under the age of eighteen to wear helmets. Prior to the passage of the 1976 provision, the principal method of attacking headgear legislation was to challenge their constitutionality in court. Opponents' arguments typically began with an assertion that helmet-use statutes were designed solely to protect cyclists from themselves, not to protect other members of the driving public. This being the case, the opponents urged. the state or municipality that enacted them had acted beyond the limits of its constitutional powers. Constitutional challenges to headgear legislation raised the legal, political, and philosophical question of whether, and to what extent, government may act to protect individuals from their own indiscretions. Some courts squarely faced this question and held that government may protect human life for its own sake. Most other courts, however, reached this result less directly by painstakingly describing the social benefits that result from enforced self-protection. Thus the great weight of judicial authority has concluded that motorcycle helmet-use laws, despite their self-protective aspects, were constitutionally permissible: these statutes were within the scope of legislative power; and the opponents' arguments were matters for the legislature--not the courts--to consider. Even though the constitutional arguments raised by opponents of mandatory headgear legislation carried little weight as constitutional claims, they do have considerable social and political force that has led to the repeal or weakening of headgear legislation by a majority of state legislatures. Arguments that fail to impress a court often will succeed in the legislature; thus, despite the absence of court challenges to helmet laws in recent years, the issues discussed here remain pertinent to the promotion of motorcycle safety. Proponents of mandatory helmet-use legislation, and other safety measures, will continue to face arguments similar to those raised in the cases discussed here.