California law currently requires anyone under 18 to wear a helmet when riding a bike, nonmotorized scooter, skateboard, or wearing in-line or roller skates. Liu's SB 192 bill would extend this provision to everyone, not just minors, and also require cyclists to wear reflective clothing at night – requirements that no other state has adopted.

It might seem like wearing a helmet is the first-move for safe cycling, but Dan Snyder, head of the California Bicycle Coalition, disagrees: as quoted in the Sacramento Bee, “We know that the most important thing to protect people who ride bikes is to get more people out there riding bikes. Forcing people to wear crash helmets when they ride is counter productive to that goal.” This is the same reasoning behind ”Critical Mass": organized cycling tours that flood city streets with so many cyclists as to force car traffic into submission. Safety, for cyclists, is in numbers.

In countries with a hefty number of cyclists, where infrastructural adaptations for cyclists coexist with car traffic, helmets are far less common. In The Netherlands, bells, lights and reflectors are required for all cyclists, but helmets aren’t, regardless of age. Same goes in Denmark, where a proposal to make children under 12 wear bicycle helmets was struck down in 2009. But until that infrastructure exists in California, or the numbers to populate and demand it, cyclists will be asked to preempt their own damages.