Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute

Bicycle Helmet Laws

Summary: There is no federal law in the U.S. requiring bicycle helmets. The states and localities below began adopting laws in 1987. Most are limited to children under 18, but there are 49 all-ages laws, broken out on our all-ages page. At present, 22 States including the District of Columbia have state-wide laws, and more than 200 localities have local ordinances. Riders of electric bikes are required to wear helmets in some states listed on this ebike page in detail and noted below. More info on helmet laws follows the list.

That's a total of 22 states (including the District of Columbia as a "state") and at least 202 local laws. Only 13 states have no state or local helmet laws at all. (Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming)

These are bicycle helmet laws. As noted, we often do not have good info on what laws cover skaters, scooter users, Segways, ebikes or other conveyances, although where known we have a * indicating that. In 2018 the State of Connecticut was the first to pass an electric bicycle law that requires helmets on e-bikes for all ages. Other states are adopting similar laws promoted by People for Bikes.

Here is the same list by date that the law became effective.

We update our page periodically by searching those local municipal and County codes that are available on the web. You can do that for your community at Municode.com if your own code is posted. Washington State codes are found at Municipal Research Services Center of Washington. Aside from the published codes, our sources are community residents who email us to tell us about their law.

We also have another page with more info on mandatory helmet laws, including copies of some of them. And we have a page for anyone writing a new law suggesting language on standards. We recommend looking at the Hernando, MS, law passed in 2010 as one that covers all the bases and has up-to-date language on standards.

The National Traffic Safety Board has made an unprecedented study of bicycle injuries and countermeasures, announced in 2019. They recommend major improvements in almost all of the elements that make up the bicyclist environment, and also the passage of all-ages helmet laws. An early press release in November 2019 said the study will be available soon.

If you are lobbying for a law, the Ohio Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics has produced this unique https://ohioaap.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-Bike-Helmet-toolkit.pdf. "Assisting local communities in educating decision makers on the importance of a youth bicycle helmet law."

To search the web for details on state and local laws, we recommend this page on the League of American Bicyclists site.

Here is a map of the US highlighting the states with helmet laws.

State and local helmet laws now apply in states that include more than half of the total population of the US, but actually a much smaller portion of the population is covered, less than 15 per cent, due to age limitations of the laws. Laws have been proposed and may be either defeated or in some stage of the legislative process in a number of other states. In 2020 that includes at least Kentucky. And a proposed NY State law targeted at New York City would require helmets for every rider on a bicycle, e-bike or e-scooter in a city with a population over 1 million.

If you need detail on the provisions of these proposed laws, including penalties, enforcement, associated educational campaigns, helmet banks or giveaway programs, treatment of contributory negligence (liability) provisions, or dates of enactment, Safe Kids Worldwide has a status sheet on bicycle helmet laws available from Meg Farrage at 202-662-0616. We are indebted to Safe Kids Worldwide for their help in keeping our list up to date, and to Ralph Wessels for information on the Washington State communities. Shirley Scatcherd provided the info on the St. Louis County local laws (35 of them!), and we have her original detailed compilation of them up. We also have an email with detail on the St Louis County Law including their unique street sign.

Evaluations

Here is a link to a formal study on the effect of bicycle helmet legislation on bicycling fatalities.

Consumer Product Safety Commission staffer Greg Rodgers has published a study concluding that the presence of a State law increases helmet use by 18.4 per cent.

New York State reported that since it introduced its first helmet law in 1989 for passengers under 5, and its second in 1994 for riders under 14, the annual rate of cyclists hospitalized from bicycle-related traumatic brain injuries fell for the under 14 group from 464 in 1990 to 209 in 1995. The rate for cyclists 14 and over for the same years declined less rapidly, from 454 to 382. There is no way to determine exactly what proportion of the improvement was due to helmet laws, since there is no data on improvements to bicycle facility safety, rider education or total miles ridden in those years, and helmet promotion campaigns by Safe Kids Worldwide and others were active in the state. But it is likely that increased helmet use, prompted by passage of the first law in 1989 and the promotion campaigns in New York communities, played a role in the reduction of injuries.

New Jersey reported in July of 1997 that since it introduced a helmet law for kids under 14 the number of bicycle-related fatalities for that group fell by 60 per cent, from 41 in 1987-1991 to 16 in 1992-1997. For riders age 14 and over the figures were 75 and 71. The School Board of Sommers Point, NJ added a helmet rule and boosted helmet use by those who ride to school from 6 per cent up to more than 70 per cent. Their attorney thought that failure to require helmets could leave the School District liable in the event of an injury.

Duval County, Florida, reported an increase in helmet use by all ages from 19 per cent in 1996 to 47 per cent in 1997 after the Florida law was passed. Bicycle deaths fell from five to one, and injuries from 325 to 105. Results were even better in the age group covered by the law. Hillsborough County, Florida, also reports an increase in helmet use and a decline in injuries after passage of the same law.

A study done in North Carolina using actual field observation before (1999) and after (2002) their law covering kids under 16 passed showed a small increase in adult helmet use but no increase for kids covered by the law. Overall on-street NC helmet use went from 18% to 24%, with larger gains among mountain bikers. The study concluded that "statistical analyses indicate that the law failed to generate a differential increase in helmet use by children ages zero to 15 years, mandated to wear helmets, compared with those ages 16 and above and not covered by the law. Although the difference in helmet use between surveys (1999 pre-law and 2002 post-law) was significant, it is clear that the helmet requirement has had little effect on increasing helmet use by children thus far." As far as we know they have not updated the study since 2002.

A study published in Pediatrics in 2002 found that in Canada the bicycle-related head injury rate declined significantly (45% reduction) in provinces where legislation had been adopted compared with provinces and territories that did not adopt legislation (27% reduction). A 2010 Canadian study showed that bicycle usage remained constant after helmet laws were adopted in two provinces, and that helmet use was increased more by all-ages laws than those applying only to children.

A study of California statistics by Lee et al published in Accident Analysis & Prevention in 2005 shows that head injuries in the under-16 group covered by the law went down by 18.2 per cent in California after the state helmet law was passed. There was no change in adult head injury rates.

This statistical analysis concludes that passing a state-wide bicycle helmet law covering youth riders reduces cycling by those who are covered by the law by 4 to 5 per cent. We note a number of problems with the data they used, but are still concerned about the conclusion. No actual rider counts have ever shown that result anywhere in the US.

Notes

International

The Czech Republic requires helmets for those under 16.

France has a lively discussion on helmets going on. The best summary is probably this page on the Mieux se Déplacer å Bicyclette site. They analyze deaths in Paris and in France as a whole and conclude that helmet usage is a personal question but can save lives. In 2017 a French law went into effect requiring helmets for anyone under 12 years old, with a fine of €135 for an adult carrying a child on their bike without a helmet or accompanying a child who is cycling without one.

The Netherlands has a similar discussion, focusing primarily on children and seniors. Helmet laws would be a big step for a country as bike-centric as the Netherlands, where cycling has been made safer by meticulous attention to road facilities, legal structure that places all blame on a motorist in a crash and by high volumes of riders. A study published in 2020 by van den Brand et al concluded: "In this study we found that patients with TBI due to bicycle accidents did not wear helmets as often as a comparable control group. This association could not be established for patients with TBI as a result of a collision between a bicycle and a motorized vehicle. This study has some limitations, but the results strongly suggest that TBI in adult cyclists could be reduced if cyclists in the Netherlands would wear a helmet more often. Future research should focus on establishing the exact frequency of bicycle helmet use in the Netherlands and ways to promote helmet use without discouraging cycling."

Germany examined the question of a mandatory helmet law in 2023 and reportedly decided not to pursue it.

Japan adopted a national helmet law in 2008 that requires children under 13 to wear helmets. This page has some info on that. A Yomiuri Shinbun article reported that 76 per cent of the surveyed parents of kids 1 to 6 years old had bought helmets for their kids, but only 54 per cent said the kids always wear them. A 2023 law requires all riders of all ages to use helmets, or at least says: “Cyclists must make an effort to wear a helmet.” The government found that in a crash unhelmeted riders were about twice as likely to die as helmeted riders. There will be no punishment for failure to observe the law. There are reports of new helmets being marketed in Japan as a result of the law.

Mexico City briefly adopted a mandatory helmet law, but an article on the European Bicycle Federation site said they repealed it in February of 2010 in an effort to support their shared bicycle rental program, Ecobici. We have more comments on our page on shared bicycle programs.

In April of 2003 the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) announced that it intended to make helmet use compulsory in the professional races it sanctions. The ruling has stuck this time (in 1991 an compulsory helmet rule was rejected by the riders). It followed several well-publicized deaths, including that of Kazakh rider Andrei Kivilev. Kivilev died of a head injury without a helmet. The impetus for the ruling had also grown since a helmeted rider fell on a turn at an intersection in a rainy Dutch stage of the Tour de France and hit his head on a concrete bollard in the center of the road, but to the astonishment of the crowd got up and raced away. In 2004 the UCI even extended its requirement for impact protection to the teardrop-shaped "chrono" helmets the riders use in time trials for better aerodynamics. The rule initially had an exemption for elite riders in climbs of more than 5 km. The current version is here.

Our View

Helmet Law Links

• A Systematic Review of Bicycle Helmet Laws Enacted Worldwide is a 2018 study of helmets laws done at Australia's UNSW Sidney. This link is to the full text .pdf file. The summary: "There are currently 28 countries in total that have a bicycle helmet law. When the data is broken down in terms of countries, states, and cities, there have been at least 273 bicycle helmet laws enacted all over the world. Nine countries have bicycle helmet laws that apply to all ages as well as half of Canadian provinces, some US cities, urban travel in Chile and Slovakia, and interurban travel in Israel and Spain. To date, seventeen jurisdictions have modified their laws and only two laws have been fully repealed (Mexico City and Bosnia and Herzegovina)" In the intervening years the Portland, Washington State, USA law has also been repealed.
• The Rascal Rides Blog has a restatement of some of our list by state as text. They have some interesting notes as well.
• The US Government: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of DOT, has a report called Bicycle Helmet Use Laws: Lessons Learned from Selected Sites CD-ROM 2004. It includes lessons learned from Austin, Texas; Jacksonville and Duval County, Florida; the State of Maryland; the State of Oregon; Port Angeles, Washington, and Seymour, Connecticut. It is a 219 page file in .pdf format. We include that file now on the CD we send with our Toolkit for Helmet Promotion Programs. Email us at the address below if you need just the CD.
• NHTSA also has an interesting page on automotive seatbelt laws, if you can find it. It shows that most states have minimal fines for not wearing a seatbelt. At the time of the report only 21 of them authorized a police officer to stop a car and ticket the driver for not wearing a belt, and some states are adding similar offenses since the #MeToo movement showed that they were disproportionately enforced against people of color. New Hampshire still has no seatbelt law for adults. The parallels with bicycle helmet laws are obvious.
• A CPSC study on the effectiveness of State helmet laws concludes that a state helmet law increases helmet use by 18.4 per cent.
• This BikePortland blog article concluded that the Vancouver, Washington, law has not had much effect. Riders are not wearing helmets, and head injuries are rising as cycling becomes more popular.
• The UK Department for Transport has published a study of helmet effectiveness geared toward decision-making about mandatory helmet requirements.
• The most definitive site that promoted scepticism about the use of helmets and laws to require them was that of the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation. They find "serious flaws in the evidence most frequently cited in favour of helmet effectiveness. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that real-world data, from independent sources and based on large populations where helmet use has become common, do not support these claims. Most disturbing of all, there are sources of evidence to suggest that increased helmet use has sometimes been associated with an increase in the number or severity of head injuries to cyclists." All that is on their Policy Statement page. They have links to other like-minded sites. But the site now says: "Since 2020-08-29 this website is an archive, to preserve links. Not much has been added since about 2016."
• New Zealand's John Wren published a good article from the pro-helmet side.

Other Helmet Law Lists

• The law firm De Caro and Kaplen has a page advocating bicycle helmet laws with a map, nice graphics and stats, referencing this page as the source for the bicycle laws.
• The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a page on bike helmet laws, but it only covers states and does not include ebike laws.
• NHTSA has a page on bike helmet laws but their list has only State laws and was out of date when we last checked.