AMA members help defeat federal helmet law

The U.S. Senate has voted down a provision that would have forced states to impose mandatory helmet laws or risk losing federal money for their highway and trail projects.

Action by American Motorcyclist Association members, many of them using AMADirectlink.com's Rapid Response Center, helped defeat the amendment. The AMA worked alongside the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, the American Highway Users Alliance, and many state motorcycle rights organizations to defeat this amendment.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), along with Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), had offered the amendment to a six-year, $294 billion transportation bill currently being debated in the Senate. The amendment was voted down 69-28 on Wednesday, May 11.

The AMA first learned of the impending amendment when the Senate was out of session and quickly alerted AMA members to the impending action. Based on feedback by Congressional staff, AMA Government Relations Department staff believe that AMA members voiced their personal opinions on the issue in great numbers.

“I am pleased that AMA members and other groups and organizations worked closely together on this issue,” said Edward Moreland, AMA vice president of government relations.

The amendment would have penalized any state without a mandatory motorcycle helmet law for all riders by denying the state the ability to determine how their federal transportation dollars were spent.

After the amendment was defeated, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, told the AMA, “I continue to stand firm on my belief that motorcycle helmet use requirements are decisions most appropriately made by the states and that Congress should not threaten to transfer or withhold a state's highway funds in order to force the state into passing a helmet law.”

The AMA believes that states should be able to determine their respective helmet policies free from the threat of federal sanctions. Congress affirmed this as recently as 1995 in the National Highway System Act, when it removed federal penalties placed on states without mandatory helmet laws.

While victory was achieved by this latest action, this is still not the end of the transportation reauthorization process. Check AMADirectlink.com and the Rapid Response Center to watch for future “Action Alerts” related to this important piece of federal legislation as it moves toward final passage and signing by the president.