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March 17, 2015
Honorable Carol Liu
State Capitol, Room
Sacramento, CA 95814
Re: SB 192, OPPOSE UNLESS AMENDED
Dear Senator Liu:
The California Bicycle Coalition enables more people to bicycle for healthier, safer, and more
prosperous communities for all. We represent California’s bicycling community, from the “grass tops”
of sixteen professionally-staffed local advocacy organizations to the grassroots of 30,000 dues-paying
members. We organize clubs, bike shops, local governments, local leaders, and individuals who seek to
make their communities better places to bicycle.
Senator, you are a leader in the “Safe Routes to School” movement. Your efforts have helped to
increase bicycling and walking to schools through education and infrastructure improvements. You
voted for the “Three Feet for Safety Act” to help encourage more civility on our streets, and basic
protections for people on bikes, along with other bills to support bicycling and improve safety. As a
result, there are more people on bikes today and the State of California inches closer to our goal of
doubling the amount of bicycling in California by 2017 and tripling it by 2020.
While we wholeheartedly agree with your goal of increasing bicycle safety, we strongly oppose SB 192,
mandating helmets and reflective gear for adults on bicycles, because it would have the opposite
effect: mandatory helmet laws discourage people from bicycling and in so doing make the streets less
safe for those who ride bicycles -- and for pedestrians and motorists too.
Mandatory helmet laws in places like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, as well as in municipalities
around the U.S. have depressed bicycling rates, but done little to reduce head injuries. Multiple studies
have shown that increasing rates of bicycling is key to improving safety.
Just as important as facts about safety are the facts about the health benefits of bicycling which far
outweigh its risks. Most studies suggest that bicycling with or without a helmet saves about twenty
lives for every life lost in a crash. When compared with other everyday activities, bicycling is not a
particularly dangerous activity. Per mile, a pedestrian has a 3.5 times greater chance of a fatal injury
than a bicyclist. Driving leads to many more head injuries than bicycling. And bicycling is getting safer
-- the risk of injury while riding a bike in California has dropped 42% just since 2000.
For citations and peer reviewed studies on the effects of mandatory helmet laws around the world,
and on the risk-benefit ratio of bicycling, please visit calbike.org/SB192quickfacts.
California Bicycle Coalition | 1017 L Street, #288 |Sacramento CA 95814 | 916.251.9433 | calbike.org
Enabling more people to bicycle for the health, safety, and prosperity of all Californians.
United, the bicycle advocacy community urges you not to go forward with the proposed mandatory
helmet law. We cannot afford to risk the success that we have had in preventing injuries and
encouraging more bicycling with a proposal that, whatever its intentions, has never been
shown to do either. Instead, please work with us on our community’s shared safety priorities to
protect your constituents and everyone who rides a bicycle.
Please join our platform for a growth in bicycling in California by supporting the our priorities for
2015:
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Increase funding for the Active Transportation Program to build networks of better bikeways,
especially protected bike lanes, throughout the state;
Enable more bicycle education by supporting local diversion programs allowing any person
who is ticketed while riding a bike to take an education class for a decreased fine in lieu of
paying a full ticket fee.
Also, we would like you to take the opportunity in SB 192 to fix a grave oversight in the existing
helmet law. Currently in California, if a bike riding victim of a crash was not wearing a helmet, that
fact may be introduced as evidence in a civil suit to reduce the damages that a jury awards – even
when the motorist is entirely at fault for the collision. To lay responsibility on the victim who is doing
everything exactly correctly and in accordance with the law is a travesty of justice whether the victim is
riding a bike, walking across the street, or in a car. California is one of four states with a child helmet
mandate that does not protect victims of crashes from this injustice. Please introduce a law to
protect the law-abiding victims of traffic crashes and their families by prohibiting in civil suits
the finding of contributory negligence for failure to wear a helmet.
California is becoming a safer place for bicycling. Injuries are down; bicycling is up. (Notably, the
measures taken to make the streets safer for people on bicycles have also resulted in an injury risk to
pedestrians that is lower by 70% and 80%, respectively.) We want to maintain this trend toward a
California where bicycling is as safe, comfortable, and commonplace as it is in places like Germany
and the Netherlands, where helmet use is almost nil, yet the injury risk to bicyclists is 86% less and
95% less, respectively. It is our goal that California achieve the same level of safety on its roads for our
vulnerable users. Backed by mounting data that continues to show the importance of excellent bicycle
infrastructure, as well as the latent demand for bicycling, we believe that making it easier for more
people to get on bikes will yield far greater safety benefits than requiring the few who already do ride
to wear helmets and reflective gear while doing so.
Let’s work together to actually make California safer for bicycling and walking. Let’s support people
who are victims of traffic crashes. Please abandon the adult helmet mandate and amend SB 192 to
institute a clause protecting victims of traffic collisions who are not at fault for a collision.
Sincerely,
Dave Snyder
Executive Director
California Bicycle Coalition
CC: Senator Jim Beall, Committee on Transportation and Housing, chairman
California Bicycle Coalition | 1017 L Street, #288 |Sacramento CA 95814 | 916.251.9433 | calbike.org
Enabling more people to bicycle for the health, safety, and prosperity of all Californians.