A Brain Surgeon Says Wear A Motorcycle Helmet. So Wear A Damn Helmet

Because the truth is your brain doesn't care about your politics.

By: Enrico Punsalang

Aug 21, at 7:00am ET

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I’ve spent most of my life doing things on two wheels that come with a pretty obvious disclaimer: Eventually, you’re probably gonna fall off. I grew up as a competitive mountain biker, and I’ve been riding motorcycles on and off road since I was old enough to legally get a license.

I’ve crashed bicycles, high-sided motorcycles, ridden on racetracks, competed on two wheels, and generally accumulated enough experience with gravity to know that gravity always wins.

And yet, I want to keep doing all of this until I’m old and gray. I want to be that elderly guy still talking about suspension settings nobody asked about. That’s why I’ve always found the debate surrounding motorcycle helmets strange. Wearing one costs me almost nothing in terms of enjoyment, yet it could help preserve my ability to enjoy motorcycles for decades. If that’s the price of admission, I’m struggling to find the downside.

Apparently, a neurosurgeon thinks the argument is pretty straightforward too. In a recent article published by The Washington Post, Paul Kanev, senior surgeon emeritus at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s department of pediatric neurosurgery, responded to proposed federal legislation that would abolish Washington, D.C.‘s universal motorcycle helmet requirement. His assessment wasn’t particularly ambiguous: decades of medical and public safety evidence support helmets.

Photo by: Enrico Punsalang

Kanev cited NHTSA figures showing helmets reduce motorcycle fatalities by roughly 22 to 42% and brain injuries by 41 to 69%. More importantly, he pointed out what gets lost when helmet debates become arguments about whether someone lives or dies. Traumatic brain injuries can leave survivors with permanent cognitive, neurological, and functional disabilities. Surviving the crash isn’t necessarily the end of the story.

The legislation Kanev was responding to comes from Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana. Their bills would overturn D.C.’s requirement that motorcycle operators and passengers wear helmets regardless of age. Predictably, the debate has become one about personal liberty and whether the government should be allowed to tell an adult what they need to put on their head.

I understand the freedom argument. Motorcycling itself is built around personal choice, and I’d rather riders weren’t regulated into bubble-wrapped oblivion. But I also think we’ve picked an exceptionally stupid hill to die on. Of all the restrictions affecting motorcyclists, we’re fighting over the piece of equipment specifically designed to stop our skulls from becoming part of the pavement.

It Doesn’t Take A Huge Crash To Hurt Your Brain

There’s a misconception buried somewhere in the helmet debate that the crash where you’ll need one must be spectacular. You picture freeway speeds, an intersection collision, or some enormous high-side that sends you into low Earth orbit. But traumatic brain injury doesn’t require a dramatic motorcycle accident. Your motorcycle doesn’t even need to be moving particularly quickly.

Tip over awkwardly in a parking lot and your head can still travel several feet toward pavement. Hit something hard enough and the rapid acceleration, deceleration, and rotation of your head can injure your brain. A concussion itself is a traumatic brain injury. You don’t need to be traveling at 100 miles per hour for your afternoon, or potentially the rest of your life, to change dramatically.

That’s part of why Kanev’s perspective matters here. This isn’t someone speculating about what might happen inside your skull. He’s a neurosurgeon arguing that helmets absorb and distribute impact energy that would otherwise reach your skull and brain. And while we motorcyclists can debate politics, personal liberty, and government overreach until closing time, physics isn’t especially interested in participating.

Freedom Is Great. So Is Being Able To Remember Your Own Name

I absolutely believe adults should be allowed to take risks. Every time I ride a motorcycle, I’m voluntarily accepting considerably more risk than if I’d taken a car. Mountain biking isn’t particularly interested in protecting me from rocks and trees either. Risk is part of these activities, and trying to eliminate all of it would fundamentally change them.

But accepting risk doesn’t mean every additional risk suddenly becomes sacred. There’s a difference between accepting the inherent danger of riding and deliberately throwing away an extremely effective layer of protection because putting something on your head is mildly inconvenient. I don’t wear a helmet because I’m scared of motorcycles. I wear one precisely because I love motorcycles too much to unnecessarily gamble my future on them.

Kanev makes another point that’s harder to squeeze into the neat “my head, my choice” argument. Severe motorcycle trauma doesn’t affect only the person holding the handlebars. Families live with the consequences. So do emergency services, trauma centers, rehabilitation facilities, insurers, and healthcare systems. Personal freedom matters, but the consequences of exercising it aren’t always particularly personal.

I Want To Keep Riding

As riders, we already spend absurd amounts of money chasing safety and performance. We celebrate cornering ABS, traction control, airbag systems, better brakes, sticky tires, sophisticated suspension, and electronic rider aids. We’ll happily spend hundreds of dollars upgrading something because it supposedly gives us three% more confidence midcorner. Apparently, putting protective material around the human brain is where some of us discover the tyranny of government.

A good helmet isn’t perfect. Nothing is. It can’t guarantee you’ll walk away from every crash, and wearing one doesn’t magically make motorcycling safe. That’s not the argument I’m making. I’m saying the tradeoff is so ridiculously small compared with what we’re trying to protect that I can’t understand why we’ve turned it into a cultural battle.

What do you think?

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I’ve spent nearly my entire life on two wheels. I want decades more of this nonsense. I want more motorcycles, more mountain bikes, more racetracks, more trails, and probably more pointless debates about tire pressures with friends. I want to still be doing all of it when my knees complain louder than my exhaust.

So if putting a helmet on my head improves my chances of getting there, even slightly, I’ll put the damn thing on.