Of the fifty states, only 4 are 100% helmet law free! :

Colorado, Illinois, Iowa and New Hampshire

You can click on each or any of these states and read how they obtained and maintain their freedom.

Of the other 46 states, 20 have full helmet laws for all motorcycle riders:

Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

You can click on each or any of these states and read the statute, the regulation defining what constitutes a "safety helmet" and our suggestions about how to best attack the statute in court.

19 States have helmet laws that exempt adult riders, riders over the age of majority -- 18 years old and over. Those states are:

Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

You can click on each or any of these states and read the statute, the regulation defining what constitutes and "safety helmet" and our suggestions about how to best attack the statute in court.

There are 7 states that discriminate against adult bikers between the ages of 18 and 20. How bikers ever got involved in discriminating against their own kind (just younger) is beyond our comprehension. Those embarassments to the community are:

Arkansas (*), Florida, Kentucky (*), Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas (*).

The theory has been expressed that drawing the line at 21 is "politically expedient" -- which means that there are supposed to be some legislators who would vote for freeing adult riders over 21, but who would not vote to free adult riders between the ages of 18 and 20. We have not been able to locate any of these particular legislators, but we are sure they exist. (Arkansas won their "victory" in 1997 by a better than 2-1 vote for the modification; a margin which would only have been needed to override a veto by the Governor, which there was no chance they would face. It is not even possible that if the so-called rights organizations had held to the principle that all adults are free, or none, that the bill would not have passed as easily. In other words, they sold out their younger brothers for NOTHING!)

* - The most controversial compromise -- some call it necessary, some insidious -- of them all is the insurance compromise. This new trend came to us from the great state of Texas in 1997, compliments of NCOM, and is the reported brainchild of Richard Lester and his AIM attorneys -- the folks that also brought us the "leg-off" cases against Harley Davidson Motorcycles, Inc. -- which only goes to show what happens when you let somebody that don't know shit about riding a motorcycle, make decisions for the community. And, before you get too excited about the prospects for bringing this legislation to your particular state, think about what you're saying. The "public burden theory" is just that, a baseless theory, until we start to apologize with such spineless concessions. Sometimes freedom for ourselves comes at a cost to others, and unless they are willing to live by your compromise, don't . . . God hates cowards. --quig