COLUMBIA, SC - One of the prefiled bills in the South Carolina Senate would require all motorcyclists in South Carolina to wear helmets. Now, only riders under 21 years old have to wear them.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Ralph Anderson, D-Greenville.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 20 states require all riders to wear helmets. 27 other states, including South Carolina, require them for only some riders.
The IIHS says Kentucky repealed its universal helmet law in 1998, followed by Louisiana in 1999. These actions resulted in lower helmet use, and quickly increased motorcyclist deaths in these states by 50 percent and 100 percent, respectively. It says motorcycle deaths also increased in Texas and Florida after those states weakened their helmet laws.
But the motorcycle riders group ABATE, which stands for A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments, will fight the bill. ABATE assistant state coordinator Dean Collins says, "We don't have a problem at all with the device itself, but our biggest problem is taking more of our freedoms away from us and giving you the right to choose on your own there. It's just more government interference."
While the IIHS statistics indicate that helmets save lives, ABATE says other statistics can show that they don't. It says the death-per-accident rate in Maryland actually went up after it enacted a mandatory helmet law. Collins says it could be because the majority of motorcycle deaths are caused by body trauma, not head trauma.
There's also the cost debate. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says numerous studies show just over half of all motorcycle crash victims have private health insurance coverage, which means taxpayers pick up the tab for the rest. But Collins says that's also true for car accident victims who don't have insurance.
The bill faces a tough fight in the legislature. It's been assigned to the Senate Transportation Committee, chaired by Berkeley County Sen. Larry Grooms, who's against mandatory helmet laws.
And even if the bill were to pass the House and Senate, it faces a veto by Gov. Nikki Haley. She says, "We encourage everyone to wear a helmet and be safe, but we will always support protecting the liberties of our citizens and have never supported a mandatory helmet law."
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