State E-Bike and Bicycle Helmet Laws

It's important to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle or electric bicycle. Riders who wear helmets are less likely to suffer serious and even fatal injuries if they're in an accident. In addition to these safety benefits, helmet use is legally required in many states and municipalities. Not wearing a helmet could also hurt your chances of recovering for your injuries if you're involved in an accident.

This article explains:

• what you need to know about state and local bicycle and electric bicycle helmet laws, and
• how ignoring a helmet law can affect your potential for compensation if you're injured in a bicycle accident.

At the bottom of this article, you'll find a chart laying out each state's helmet requirements for bicycle and electric bicycle riders.

Bicycle Helmet Laws

Wearing a bicycle helmet is always a good idea no matter what the law has to say. Studies have shown that wearing a helmet reduces a rider's risk of suffering serious injuries, including fatal head injuries. Bicycle helmet laws might also have an impact on an injury claim after a bicycle-car accident (more on this a little later).

No state currently requires helmets for adult bicyclists, but just under half of U.S. states require the use of helmets by riders under a certain age. And it's very important to note that the city or town where you live might have its own bicycle helmet ordinance that's stricter than the law at the state level.

For example, the state of Texas does not have a bicycle helmet law, but laws in a number of cities in Texas (including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston) require riders under the age of 18 to wear helmets. So, even though there's no statewide bicycle helmet law, minors riding in these areas will still need to wear a helmet.

Similarly, the state of Washington does not have a statewide bicycle helmet law, but many cities and counties in Washington require all riders—adults and minors—to wear helmets.

Electric Bicycle Helmet Laws

State and local helmet requirements for e-bike riders can vary significantly from the ones that apply to people on traditional bicycles. This reflects both the relatively recent increase in e-bike popularity and the very different risks posed by these motor-assisted vehicles. E-bikes are heavier and have higher top speeds than pedal bicycles, which means e-bike riders risk more serious injuries—especially head and neck injuries—if they're in an accident. It is therefore even more important for e-bike riders to wear helmets than it is for riders of traditional bicycles.

Whether you're legally required to wear a helmet varies depending on what type of e-bike you're riding, where you live, and your age. Nearly all states have adopted some version of a three-tier system for defining and regulating e-bikes. Under this system, e-bikes are split into:

• Class 1 e-bikes. The motors of these bikes only operate when the rider is pedaling and the bike is traveling 20 miles per hour or less.
• Class 2 e-bikes. The motors of these bikes can work even if the rider isn't pedaling. But the motor still stops operating if the bike reaches 20 miles per hour.
• Class 3 e-bikes. These e-bikes have motors that only work when the rider is pedaling and the bike is traveling 28 miles per hour or less. These e-bikes must also have speedometers.

This system provides some standardization for e-bike helmet laws and other rules. But keep in mind that not all states use the three-class system. And even states that do use the classification system can have different rules for e-bikes in the same class. For example:

• In Colorado, you're only legally required to wear a helmet if you're under 21 and operating a Class 3 e-bike.
• In Florida, the rules are the same for all classes of e-bike. You must wear a helmet if you are under 16, but they are optional if you're older.
• In Pennsylvania, which does not use the three-class system, helmets are not required. However, no one under age 16 is allowed to operate any class of e-bike.

The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute keeps track of e-bike helmet laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You can also learn more about e-bike laws in each state through fact sheets compiled by PeopleForBikes. And remember that, as with the helmet laws for traditional bicycles, e-bike helmet laws can be more stringent at the local level than they are statewide.

Bicycle Accidents and Helmet Laws

In recent years, around 800 bicyclists have been killed in traffic accidents in the U.S., and approximately 48,000 have suffered injury. A large majority of bicycle-versus-vehicle accidents happen in urban areas, so it's no surprise that big cities often have the strictest helmet laws. But regardless of what state and local laws require where you live, it's a good idea to wear a helmet any time you're riding a bicycle or e-bike. There's simply no better way to protect yourself from head injury.

Violating a helmet law doesn't risk just your physical safety—it also risks your chance of getting compensation from an at-fault driver if you're injured in a collision with a vehicle. In many states, when a person ignores a law and then suffers the kind of injury that the law was enacted to prevent, the person is automatically deemed negligent.

This means that if you're injured in an e-bike or bicycle accident, and you weren't wearing a helmet when the law required you to do so, you could be found liable for your injuries—even when another person was at fault in the accident. So, in a personal injury lawsuit, your state's rules on shared fault could kick in to either reduce the amount of compensation you can receive from the at-fault driver, or eliminate your opportunity to collect anything at all. (Learn more about comparative and contributory negligence rules.)

In some cases, you might need to show that your head injury would have occurred even if you had been wearing a helmet, and that can be a tough thing to prove.

Purchasing and Fitting a Bicycle Helmet

All bicycle helmets sold in the U.S. should come with a sticker (usually somewhere inside the helmet) stating approval by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Different manufacturers take different approaches when it comes to things like concussion prevention, so one helmet's inner layer might be designed to perform differently from another. Bicycle helmets also come in different external shapes, but there's no consensus on which design is safest. The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute has compiled a lot of useful data for consumers, including in-depth helmet ratings.

Just as important as finding the right helmet is making sure it fits, and that you're wearing it correctly. Here are some tips, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):

• Try on more than one helmet and make sure you're properly adjusting the fit rings and/or the sizing pads.
• The helmet should sit low (one or two finger widths above the eyebrow) and fairly snug, and shouldn't rock on your head.
• The chin strap should also be fairly snug, so that only one or two fingers can fit under it where it rests on the skin.
• One way to check how well a helmet and chin strap fit is to open your mouth into a wide yawn. This should cause a properly-fitted helmet to pull down on your head.

Your Options If You've Been Injured in a Bicycle Accident

As touched on above, a bicycle accident can lead to an injury claim or other legal action, especially after a car-versus-bike collision. Putting aside the issue of helmet laws and whether or not the cyclist was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, it's usually possible for an injured cyclist to file an insurance claim or lawsuit after a traffic accident, when the vehicle driver's liability for the crash is pretty clear.

As long as the at-fault driver has liability car insurance coverage, an injured bicyclist can typically file a "third party" car insurance claim with the driver's insurer. Most often these kinds of case will reach a settlement, but if the other side is disputing a key issue like fault or the legitimacy of the bicyclist's injuries, the matter could escalate to the point where a personal injury lawsuit is filed in court.

Recovery of compensation for a wide variety of losses ("damages" in legalese) is typically possible in an insurance claim or lawsuit, including:

• the bicyclist's medical bills arising from treatment for their accident injuries
• any income lost as a result of the accident
• the financial impact of any future limits on the bicyclist's ability to earn a living
• other out-of-pocket losses arising from the accident (damage to the bicycle, reimbursement of transportation costs, etc.)
• mental and physical pain and suffering caused by the crash, the bicyclist's injuries, necessary medical treatment, and
• other effects that the accident and resulting injuries have had on the bicyclist.

If it looks like someone else was clearly at fault for an accident that injured you, it might make sense to discuss your situation—and your options—with an experienced injury lawyer.

Bicycle Helmet Laws By State

Here's a list of the states with statewide bicycle and electric bicycle helmet laws, along with the ages of riders required to wear helmets. It's important to remember that even if your state does not have a statewide helmet law, there might be local laws (passed by your city, township, or county, for example) requiring helmet use in certain circumstances.