Kansas City News Blog

If Governor Jay Nixon signs Senate Bill 202 into law, Missouri motorcyclists over 21years of age will no longer be bound by law to wear helmets when they ride, except on state highways. Cyclists who love the feel of the wind in their hair (and hate to have government regulations weighing on their handlebars) have Clay County Republican Sen. Luann Ridgeway to thank if the helmet law dies at Nixon's hands this month.

Ridgeway says that she's been trying to bury Missouri's helmet law since shortly after her freshman year, in 1992. Organizations of cyclists who chafe against the idea of helmet laws, like the Freedom of Road Riders, lobbied Ridgeway enthusiastically, and while she initially thought a helmet law made common sense, the FORR was able to sway her views.

"They made a very compelling case that this is not anything more than basically a nanny state issue," Ridgeway says. "If we wanted to talk about safety, and if safety was the gold standard ... the number-one cause of serious head injuries that result in people being either permanently disabled or on Medicaid and a burden on taxpayers, is automobiles. And no one would seriously file legislation saying that you should wear a safety-approved helmet inside the passenger cabin of a car."

(Though Katie Horner might advise donning one during a tornado warning!)

For years, Ridgeway's attempts at a helmet law repeal were shot down. After passing the Senate and the House this year, though, she was able to tack it onto H.B. 202 as its single amendment. H.B. 202, sponsored by freshman Sen. Kurt Schaefer, dealt with "what I felt was a major flaw in the state insurance code," Schaefer told The Pitch via e-mail.

Previously, if a car hit a motorcyclist and the motorcyclist was found to be completely fault-free in the accident, the car driver's insurance company could use the fact that the injured party drives a motorcycle -- a more hazardous vehicle, they would say -- to deny the cyclist 40 percent of what they would have paid a car driver in the same type of claim. H.B. 202 was written to get rid of the discrepancy.

A mighty effort was put up to fight the helmet law portion of H.B. 202, much of it by the Missouri Department of Transportation. In a statement issued to express his disappointment in the legislature's vote for S.B. 202, MODOT head Pete Rahn wrote: Nine to one. That's the ratio by which Missourians support the state's current law requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets. A recent telephone survey conducted by Abacus Associates shows 84 percent of Missourians are in favor of the law. ... Repealing the state's helmet law makes as much sense as ripping out the guard cable (installed in the medians of our interstates).

Schaefer was ambivalent about Ridgeway's amendment, but the senator was seriously peeved with Rahm's interference in the passage of his bill and his attempts to influence Nixon to veto it now. The telephone survey Rahn references in his statement was funded with more than $30,000 in taxpayer dollars, according to Schaefer's aide, Yancy Williams. "Pete Rahn is an unelected bureaucrat wasting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to push his personal agenda," Schaefer says. "Maybe Pete Rahn should focus more on improving mass transit in Kansas City and less time pretending to be an elected official."

Oh snap.  For her part, Sen. Ridgeway doesn't ride motorcycles -- she rides horses. And when she does, she wears a helmet.

So does Gail Worth, owner of Gail's Harley-Davidson, when she rides her Harleys. A full-face helmet is her preference. "The law of gravity says that the heaviest part of your body will hit the floor first. There's a fifty-fifty chance that either it'll be the back of your head or the front ... but I want my face to survive an accident," Worth says.

As for the helmet law, Worth isn't alienating customers who feel either way. "You will never see me riding without one," she says. "However, I don't think I should be forced to wear one. I think it should be my decision."

What's the big deal about not wearing helmets, anyway? Do the Freedom of Road Riders really do all that lobbying of legislators like Ridgeway just to feel a little wind their hair? "I believe the feeling of freedom is what they like," Worth says. "It's like drivng around in your convertable with the top down. Even though I feel like that even in a full face helmet."

I don't blame her. While the typical image of bikers might go something like this...