In the 2021 Legislative Session Missouri Motorcyclists modified the helmet law. Now five (5) years later we are faced with fighting to keep that right. A bill has been pre-filed in the Senate, SB 990, to replace the modified law with the old mandatory helmet law for all riders. In case you were unaware the modification, reads basically, that all riders over the age of 26 with health insurance can choose to ride without a helmet, that’s paraphrased. Now someone is wanting to take that away from us. I know the motorcycle fatalities have been up over the past few years but feel that fatalities are finally coming back down to a more manageable number, our highest rate was 171 in 2023 compared to 118 in 2020. We are back down to 130 this year. Now I don’t have the data that shows how many accidents have caused permanent and life changing injuries but out of over 2000 accidents per year, I’m sure there’s been a few.

 

Even though the law was changed to give a rider a choice there are still many that choose to ride with a helmet. And for the last 4 years we have had about a fifty percent fatality rate of riders with a helmet and without a helmet. The point I’m trying to make here is that a rider should be able to make that decision to wear a helmet or not wear a helmet for themselves. We as an organization fought for this freedom of choice for 40 years and we need to fight like hell to keep it.

 

Here's the legislation for the coming year:

​

2026 – LEGISLATION

​

•SB 990 – Sen. Tracy McCreery – Motorcycle Helmet law

•SB 1050 – Sen. Travis Fitzwater – Autonomous Vehicles

•SB 1283 – Sen. Jill Carter – Liability risks during Motocross activities

•SB 1369 – Sen. Joe Nicola – Enacts Provisions Relating to Motorcycles (Lane Filtering)

•HB 1660 – Rep. Brian Seitz – Right to Repair for Motorcycles

•HB 1753 – Rep. Carolyn Caton – Driver’s Education Online course

•HB 1831 – Rep. Terri Violet – Child Safety on Motorcycles and Motortricycle

•HB 2195 – Rep. Roger Reedy – Drivers Education

•HB 2069 – Rep. Brandon Phelps – Autonomous Vehicles

•HB 2208 – Rep. Don Mayhew – Autonomous Vehicles

•HB 2240 – Rep. Adrian Plank – Autonomous Vehicles

 

For now this is all the legislation I have found, but there will be a couple of other bills filed and I will get that out to you as soon as I know. There will be a bill for motorcycle lighting in the house and senate and a lane filtering bill in the house. I won’t know about them until after session starts and should know by this meeting. Everyone stay safe out there and keep the shiny side up.