State Senate Panel Rejects Repeal of Helmet Law

SACRAMENTO —  The Assembly’s Republican-backed bill to repeal the state’s 5-year-old mandatory motorcycle helmet law crashed to defeat Tuesday in the Senate Transportation Committee.

The bill received only two votes--three short of the five necessary for approval--and they were cast by Republicans. Six senators voted against it, including the committee chairman, Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), one Republican and four Democrats.

The hearing was packed with courteous bikers in black T-shirts and leather vests and trousers.

The measure’s author, Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-San Diego), a veteran motorcyclist who said he quit riding when the helmet requirement became law in 1991, kept his bill technically alive by asking that it be reconsidered at some future hearing.

“It’s not over yet. We have other plans up our sleeve,” Morrow told reporters outside the hearing as throngs of solemn bikers lined up to thank him for carrying the bill.

The proposal’s demise marked the second time in as many weeks that a high-priority bill of the new Assembly Republican majority under Speaker Curt Pringle of Garden Grove has failed in the more centrist Senate. The first was a bill repealing the state requirement that employees be paid overtime for working more than eight hours a day.

After years of failed attempts, the Legislature in 1991 passed and Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill requiring motorcycle riders to wear crash helmets as a way to prevent death and head injuries. Opponents have charged that the law intrudes on the right of cyclists to ride with the “wind in their hair” and to bear the consequences.

But supporters of the helmet law, including Wilson, have countered that head and spinal injuries suffered by motorcyclists have become a costly burden to taxpayers when the crash victims turn to public aid for health care and related costs.

At Tuesday’s hearing, representatives of the Wilson administration--including the Health Services and Mental Health departments and the California Highway Patrol--testified against the repeal.

They contended that the helmet law is working as intended to reduce death and injuries. But in a duel of conflicting statistics that has characterized virtually every Capitol hearing on the issue since it surfaced in 1968, the opposing sides fought to an inconclusive stalemate.

One witness, Steve Lambert, who became a quadriplegic when he was injured in a motorcycle crash 16 years ago, testified from a wheelchair in opposition to Morrow’s bill. “To date, I have eaten $4 million of taxpayers’ money,” he told the committee.

Other opponents included emergency room physicians, a neurosurgeon-motorcyclist, traffic safety experts and a health care economist. Supporters included representatives of motorcycle clubs, dealers and Shannon Laughy of Windsor, a hospital paramedic.

Laughy, 44, said she suffered severe neck injuries last year when her motorcycle collided with a car. She blamed the four-pound helmet for whipsawing her neck until it broke and causing her to become permanently disabled.