When I chat with people from countries where motorcycle helmets are required by law, a very easy way to blow their minds is to inform them that here in the US, we don't have any kind of federal helmet law.
In our country, it's left to individual states to decide. At the time of writing, 19 out of 50 US states (plus the District of Columbia) currently require all motorcyclists to wear helmets.
My home state, Illinois, isn't one of them. Since I'm ATGATT in general, I wear a helmet every time I ride, even if it's just to the gas station. But in my state, the only legal requirement is eye protection. Goggles, sunglasses, or even regular eyeglasses are all considered as adequate options to satisfy the legal requirements of the Land of Lincoln.
Ever since 2003, the state of Pennsylvania requires all motorcycle riders under 21 to wear helmets. However, if you're over 21, and you either have over two years of riding experience or you've completed a PennDOT or Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) approved motorcycle training course, you're under no legal obligation to wear a helmet.
Now at least one Pennsylvania state representative wants to make universal motorcycle helmet use a requirement in the state. On July 21, 2025, Representative Manuel Guzman announced that he's about to bring legislation to the state's General Assembly that would "require all motorcycle operators and passengers—regardless of age or riding experience—to wear protective headgear." Later on in his statement, he notes that "data continues to show that partial helmet laws do not provide sufficient protection to the riding public." Since this legislation has not yet been introduced, I can't comment on it just yet.
But I can tell you that I've personally had a crash where I ended up sliding a short distance on my face, and also that it happened well after I'd been riding for two years (or had turned 21, for that matter). It also happened well after I'd taken both the Basic and Intermediate MSF RiderCourses. And do you want to know why?
Because of this one weird thing that experienced riders know, and that non-riders will probably never completely grasp. No matter how alert, engaged, well-trained, and prepared we, as riders, think we are, we simply can't control everything on every ride.
We can control ourselves, and to a certain degree, we can control the condition our machines are in (if we're lucky, and there's not some weird mechanical failure or something). But we can't control other people on the road, nor road conditions, nor anything else external to ourselves.
Yes, even you. None of us can. And more of us need to admit that to ourselves, so we can do something sensible about it.
If I wasn't wearing a full-face helmet that day (like I always do), I probably wouldn't have walked away from that incident only needing to get a new helmet. Chances are good that I would have been much more seriously injured, or maybe even worse. I'm incredibly lucky, and I know it.
My clear visor on that full-face helmet was scratched to hell, but it stayed in place and it did its job. It was a low-speed crash, and so while I did have some scrapes on the armored motorcycle jeans, jacket (specifically, where the shoulder and elbow armor sit), and gloves, I was otherwise fine. My bike was fine, too; it already had some scratches, so no big deal there.
It could have been so much worse, and it wasn't. All because I was wearing a full-face helmet. That's literally the only reason that my crash was an annoyance and not a full-on medical emergency. I'm not the only one here at RideApart who can attest to how much good a quality helmet can do; Robbie reckons his Alpinestars Supertech R10 legit saved his life after he had a nasty crash last year.
I don't have time for a mega-serious medical emergency, and neither do most people. Or money, since if you live in the US, your medical treatment after a serious motorcycle crash is going to cost way more than the price of replacing a halfway decent motorcycle helmet.
Whether you ride motorcycles or drive cars, you know that certain behaviors are unsafe. Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, for example. There are laws against that sort of thing for a reason. If you drive a car, you're required by law to wear a seat belt, because there's literally decades of evidence supporting their effectiveness as safety measures.
But seat belts are a safety mitigation; not a magic cure-all that will automatically prevent you from ever getting injured in a car crash. That's why crumple zones, airbags, and a whole raft of other safety measures are part of how modern cars and trucks are made. No single element is expected to protect the occupants of a car or truck on its own.
That's also why I find the American Motorcyclist Association's assertion that "helmet use alone is insufficient to ensure a motorcyclist's safety" as an argument in favor of not requiring helmet laws to be disingenuous, at best.
Because duh, of course it isn't. A quality helmet will only offer a certain amount of protection against certain things, in much the same way that armored motorcycle gloves are meant to protect your hands, not your feet. While all those things might be true, that doesn't automatically render helmets (or gloves, for that matter) useless, or inadvisable to wear. Every little bit helps make it more likely that you'll get home safely to see your loved ones, and isn't that what it's usually all about?
Who wouldn't want that?
We've talked before about how most riders understand the risks that we inherently engage in when we go out for a motorcycle ride, even if we can't always say the same about our loved ones. But there was a time when seat belt requirements in cars were considered controversial, and we eventually overcame it and made it a law, offering more protection to drivers everywhere. I'm hopeful that Pennsylvania (and Illinois, and other states where it isn't currently a law) can do the same with helmets.
