One of the more consequential motorcycle safety measures to take effect anywhere this month concerns gloves. The reason it passed without organized resistance is, I think, bound up with the reason more substantial reforms continue to fail in the United States.
Since 1 July, every learner, P1 and P2 rider in New South Wales has been required to wear certified motorcycle gloves conforming to EN 13594:2015, and learner riders must additionally wear a high-visibility vest or jacket meeting one of three specified standards[1][2]. Non-compliance is an offense attracting a fine and two demerit points[2]. So far as I have been able to establish, no American state imposes any comparable requirement on any rider at any stage of licensing; the authoritative state-law compilations track helmets and eye protection and are silent on gloves, and I would be glad to be corrected if some jurisdiction has quietly acted.
What makes the New South Wales measure instructive is how ordinary it is. Transport for NSW examined its own data, found that deaths among riders aged 16 to 25 had risen from 12 in 2023 to 17 in 2024 and 21 in 2025, and that deaths among novice riders holding learner or provisional licenses had risen from 9 to 12 across the same period[1]. It observed that motorcycle licenses in the state have increased by more than sixty-five percent over twenty years to exceed 690,000, that approximately 27,000 learner licenses are issued annually, and that around forty percent of those are held by riders under twenty-five[1]. It then concluded that the least expensive available intervention was to require inexperienced riders to protect their hands. Departmental material puts the resulting reduction in hand and wrist injuries at up to forty-five percent; the Minister for Roads rounded this to “almost halving”[1][2].
This is the first tranche of a wider program. Extended pre-learner training, online theory modules and knowledge testing, group on-road coaching and assessment, and an optional structured learning journal are all committed, staged across the coming years to allow training providers to prepare[1].
The baseline on which all of this sits should be stated plainly, because it differs sharply from the American one. New South Wales has required a helmet of every rider since Australia introduced the world’s first compulsory helmet law on 1 January 1961[5]. It operates a three-stage graduated license — learner, provisional P1, provisional P2 — with minimum holding periods at each stage, two compulsory training courses, and a zero blood alcohol limit for novice riders[4]. Learners and provisional riders are confined to machines meeting the Learner Approved Motorcycle Scheme, capped at 150 kilowatts per tonne and 660cc[3]. The gloves requirement is a marginal addition to a framework that has been accumulating for sixty-five years, and that is the comparison that matters: not that Australia mandates gloves, but that it has reached the point of arguing about gloves while American legislatures are still contesting whether adults should wear helmets at all.
Quebec has moved in the same direction by a different route. Since the opening of the 2026 season, protective clothing — helmet, visor or goggles, long-sleeved top, long trousers, gloves, and boots or closed-toe shoes — has been mandatory during driving-school lessons and practical tests, with candidates who present without it having their tests postponed[6]. Motorcycles were already covered from 2025; the change this year extends the requirement to mopeds, scooters and three-wheeled machines. British Columbia, as I noted in May, embeds protective equipment into the license itself from the first day of training rather than offering it as advice to riders who are already fully qualified.
Against this pattern, the Hawaiian case repays close examination, because it contains its own contradiction.
On 15 July, Governor Josh Green signed Act 259 into law[7][8]. It is a substantial piece of work. It establishes minimum ages for electric bicycles and micromobility devices, requires a securely fastened helmet for e-bike riders under eighteen, imposes point-of-sale disclosure and labelling obligations on manufacturers and distributors, grants police the power to seize machines that are not road legal, and reclassifies any two- or three-wheeler capable of exceeding 28 mph under electric power as an electric motorcycle subject to licensing, registration and insurance[7][8]. It follows the veto of a similar bill in 2025 over drafting defects. Green is an emergency physician who spent years observing what happens to unprotected people at speed, and when he said that the legislation would keep people alive I see no reason to doubt him.
Hawaii’s motorcycle helmet requirement, at HRS §286-81, applies only to operators and passengers under the age of eighteen[9]. Above that age there is no requirement at all.
The effect of Act 259, therefore, is to bring electric bicycles into alignment with motorcycles: protected until eighteen, unprotected thereafter. The state will now penalize a seventeen-year-old riding a pedal-assist bicycle bare-headed, and imposes no requirement at all if, on his eighteenth birthday, he exchanges that bicycle for a machine capable of five times the speed. The legislature moved quickly and comprehensively on the vehicle that manages 28 mph; it has not gone near the exemption governing the vehicle that manages a hundred and fifty. SB 2226, which would have taken up the motorcycle question during this session, sat in committee and progressed no further[10].
The pattern is what one would expect when one constituency is organized and the other is composed of children.
In licensing, Northern Ireland confirmed in June that its Graduated Driver Licensing scheme will commence on 1 October, applying to motorcyclists as well as to category B car drivers, with a structured and logged program of training and transitional arrangements running to 31 March 2027 for existing provisional holders[11]. It is widely reported as the first such scheme in the United Kingdom. One detail deserves scrutiny: the six-month mandatory minimum learning period applies to car drivers and expressly not to motorcyclists[11]. I can construct no safety rationale for that exclusion, and would welcome the Department’s reasoning. In Great Britain, the DVSA consultation on rebuilding motorcycle training, testing and licensing — mandatory theory before CBT, restructured certificates, modernized instructor qualifications, progressive access between categories — closed on 11 May and has produced no published outcome in the three months since[12]. Three months without a published response is itself informative.
One further development is likely to be cited against the measures described above. In July, NHTSA published its sub-category breakdown of early estimates for 2025, reporting that motorcyclist fatalities fell by eight percent, from 6,228 in 2024 to an estimated 5,758[13]. This sits within an overall decline of 6.7 percent to approximately 36,640 road deaths, a headline figure first published in April[14]. These are early estimates rather than final counts, and the improvement is real and welcome. It is also the point at which pressure for reform tends to dissipate. Over the next eighteen months, repeal bills and objections to mandatory training will cite that eight percent, on the reasoning that an improving trend requires no intervention. Maryland’s SB 195, an attempt this year to repeal an all-rider helmet law that has stood for nearly thirty-four years, was opposed in joint testimony by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Emergency Nurses Association and SMARTER[15]; such attempts are annual, and a favorable statistic makes them easier to mount.
The context that does not reach the press release is this. Of the 6,228 motorcyclists killed in 2024, 5,950 were the rider rather than the passenger, and of those riders 1,529 — twenty-six percent — were alcohol-impaired at a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or above[16]. The denominator matters, and it is frequently reported carelessly. The figure describes something that licensing rules and helmet laws cannot reach. No legislature can resolve a circumstance in which more than a quarter of dead riders were drunk at the moment of the crash. That is a question of culture, and culture is the riding community’s own to change.
The observation with which I began still needs its explanation: gear rules, of all the reforms available, are the ones that pass. New South Wales mandates gloves; Quebec mandates boots; British Columbia writes protective equipment into the license. None of this attracts an organized campaign in response, and none of it has produced so much as a hostile line of testimony.
One explanation is that these jurisdictions already operate comprehensive regimes, so that one further requirement is unremarkable to riders long accustomed to helmets, staged licenses and power caps. I think that is true, and it is part of the answer. It does not, however, account for the American pattern, which is what needs explaining.
Ask what a gear rule costs a motorcycle manufacturer, and the answer is nothing at all. A nineteen-year-old purchasing his first motorcycle with a pair of certified gloves added to the invoice remains a nineteen-year-old purchasing his first motorcycle. Now ask what graduated licensing costs them, or tiered power restrictions for novices, or a universal helmet mandate in a state whose tourism economy is built on the opposite. Those reforms bear directly upon what is sold, and to whom, and how soon. Those are the reforms that die in committee in this country, year after year.
The American Motorcyclist Association’s own published positions set this out more plainly than any argument of mine could. Its board strongly encourages the use of protective equipment, naming gloves explicitly, while simultaneously holding a standing position opposing any law that would require adults to wear a helmet, and declining to oppose such requirements for minors[17]. It is also an organization whose corporate and business-member program has long included the major manufacturers. The incentive structure explains the pattern, and we ought to be able to observe as much without the observation being received as an accusation. No claim about any individual’s good faith is required or intended. The pattern of which safety measures are resisted and which pass unremarked is more informative than any individual lobbying disclosure.
I ride here on California’s central coast, and the 101 is the road most of it happens on. Through the summer I see riders heading south towards Ventura and Los Angeles in shorts and trainers, usually in groups, usually at the weekend, dressed for the heat. A competent pair of gloves costs roughly what a tank of fuel costs. Most riders work that out without a statute, because they have already worked out that when you go down your hands go out first. A nineteen-year-old three weeks into riding may not have got there yet.
Riders in New South Wales already wear helmets — every one of them, as a matter of law, since 1961 — and already progress through a staged license on a power-restricted machine before they are trusted with anything larger. Gloves and a high-visibility vest were the small remaining thing to add. Suppose your own state adopted only that small remaining thing: certified gloves for every novice rider, high-visibility clothing for every learner, and not a single one of the measures sitting beneath it: no universal helmet requirement, and no graduated license or power restriction for the inexperienced. Would you object even to that? If you would, I would ask you to state the objection in full, and to frame it around the nineteen-year-old it would cover. Appeals to governmental overreach do not engage the question. I have not yet encountered one that survives being put plainly.
References
- Minns Government set to introduce new protections for novice motorcycle riders — NSW Government, Minister for Roads, 11 May 2026. Link
- Protective gear requirements for learner and provisional riders — NSW Government. Link
- Approved motorcycles for learner and provisional riders (LAMS) — NSW Government. Link
- Evaluation of the NSW Motorcycle Graduated Licensing Scheme — Transport for NSW. Link
- Helmet use — Austroads, Assessing Fitness to Drive. Link
- Saison 2026 — moto, cyclomoteur et moto à trois roues : le port de vêtements de protection est obligatoire — SAAQ. Link
- New law enacted to improve electric bicycle safety — Hawaii Department of Transportation, 16 July 2026. Link
- State e-bike law enacted to curb injuries, deaths — Hawaii Tribune-Herald, 17 July 2026. Link
- Hawaii Revised Statutes §286-81 — Justia. Link
- HI SB2226 — BillTrack50. Link
- Green light for Graduated Driver Licensing from October — Department for Infrastructure, Northern Ireland. Link
- Improving moped and motorcycle training, testing and licensing — GOV.UK consultation. Link
- Early Estimates of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities and Fatality Rate by Sub-Categories in 2025 — NHTSA, DOT HS 813 829, July 2026. Link
- Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2025 — NHTSA, DOT HS 813 800, April 2026. Link
- MD: Latest Effort to Repeal Motorcycle Helmet Law Should Be Defeated — Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. Link
- Motorcycles: 2024 Data — NHTSA, DOT HS 813 824. Link
- Voluntary Helmet Use — AMA Board Position Statement. Link