Two US states, New Jersey and California, appear close to passing laws that will be similar to those currently in force in Italy and parts of Austria, requiring children below young-teenage to wear helmets.

The legislation is at its most advanced stage in California where Austrian-born governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is now considering whether to make the draft bill law after it successfully passed through the state’s senate with a two-thirds majority in favour last week.

If passed as it current stands by Governor Schwarzenegger, it will be the most extensive helmet law yet in that it will require all children aged up to 18 to wear helmets, older than the age requirement in countries that already have helmet laws in place.

However breaking the law would by contrast be the least severely punished, in contrast to California’s infamous ‘Three-strikes’ law which can see repeat offenders jailed for life for committing a succession of occasionally relatively minor offences. Breaking the helmet law would result in only a 25 dollar fine.

Ski resorts will be required to put up signage making the new legislation clear, but it has not been reported whether they too would face fines if they failed to enforce the law, as is the case for Italian resorts.

A Californian study determined that nearly 8,000 injuries each season in the state would be reduced or prevented altogether by wearing a helmet. They also said helmets reduced the risk of skin cancer of the scalp in the sunshine state.

The legislation has sparked a debate following the themes of safety versus personal choice. Some older teen snowsports participants said they wanted the law as it would act against peer pressure they said they felt to not wear helmets even though they wanted to. Others said such a decision should be made by parents not by legislators.

A number of leading resort groups in North America including Intrawest and Vail have already made helmet-wearing compulsory in various scenarios including for on-mountain staff and for vguests taking ski school lessons.

A spokesman for Governor Schwarzenegger, who has until September 30th to decide whether to pass the law or not, says he hasn’t expressed an opinion either way as yet.

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