You asked if Connecticut requires motorcyclists to wear protective helmets. You wanted some background on the history of this issue in Connecticut.

SUMMARY

Connecticut required anyone riding on a motorcycle, including any passenger, to wear an approved protective helmet until the law was repealed in 1976. There were no helmet requirements from 1976 until 1989. In 1989, the General Assembly enacted what is commonly known as a “partial” helmet law. It requires anyone under age 18 to wear an approved protective helmet when on a motorcycle (CGS § 14-289g). Connecticut is one of 23 states with an age- or condition-specific partial helmet law. Three states, Colorado, Illinois, and Iowa, have no helmet use requirements. The other 24 states have “universal” helmet laws, e.g., anyone operating or riding on a motorcycle must wear an approved helmet.

CONNECTICUT'S PRIOR HELMET LAW AND ITS REPEAL

Until 1976, Connecticut had a law requiring anyone riding on a motorcycle to wear protective headgear meeting standards adopted by the motor vehicles commissioner in accordance with nationally accepted standards. At the time, federal law allowed the Secretary of the U. S. Department of Transportation to impose financial sanctions against any state that did not comply with a national helmet use standard. The sanctions involved withholding 10% of a state's annual federal allotment of funding for highway construction. By 1976, only three states, one of which was California, did not have helmet laws. Each was in the process of being sanctioned when Congress decided to remove the secretary's sanctioning authority. Several states, including Connecticut, repealed their helmet use laws once the threat of sanction no longer existed.

The repeal of the Connecticut law was based principally on two factors. One was the argument, presented quite forcefully by repeal proponents, that the state should not infringe upon the rights of the individual by forcing him to wear a helmet. The second factor was the removal of the federal sanction threat.

PARTIAL HELMET USE LAW REENACTMENT

The helmet use issue has been revisited many times since the 1976 repeal. Bills to reinstate some form of mandatory helmet use were introduced in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1989. The partial helmet law currently in effect was enacted in 1989. The Transportation Committee last considered legislation to reinstate a universal helmet use requirement in 1995. The committee did not report out the bill.

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