The Sydney motorbike club that can’t legally ride

On the ultra-wide streets of Glenwood, in Sydney’s north-west, the Australian chapter of Singhs Social Motorcycle Club meets in the front lawns of the city’s suburban sprawl.

But while other motorbike clubs ride up and down the Great Western Highway of a weekend, Singhs stays put. Due to helmet rules for cyclists and motorbike riders, the club’s turban-wearing Sikh members cannot legally ride on NSW roads.

“When Sikhs fought in world wars when shots were fired, they wore turbans,” said Mavleen Dhir, who co-founded the international club’s Australian chapter in 2021 to push for legal change.

Karan Shergill and Mavleen Dhir are members of the Australian chapter of Singhs Motorcycle Club. Credit: Rhett Wyman

“It is not just a piece of cloth, it is our identity. We consider it as our crown.”

The club is the latest Sikh group to push for exemptions to NSW’s bike helmet laws for people who wear a turban. Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann will hold a second reading of a proposed exemption when state parliament resumes this week.

Sikhs are Australia’s fastest-growing and fifth-largest religious group. There were about 47,000 in NSW in 2021, more than double the number in 2011.

Sikh men typically wear a turban from age 14.

NSW and Tasmania are the only Australian states that do not allow Sikhs to ride a bicycle while wearing a turban.

However, no Australian jurisdiction permits motorbike riding without a helmet.

Other Commonwealth countries with significant Sikh populations, including the UK and parts of Canada, have exemptions for both bicycles and motorbikes.

In New Zealand, a person can ride a motorbike while wearing a turban instead of a helmet if their speed does not exceed 60 km/h.

Faerhmann’s proposed exemption, which would be included in the NSW Road Rules Act, would exempt members of the Sikh faith who wear a turban from wearing a helmet when riding bicycles, scooters, and motorbikes.

Motorbike riders wearing a turban would need to be adults with a full licence. Passengers would still need a helmet.

“We are talking about riders that are over 18 and experienced. If they choose, because of their faith, to ride a bike without a helmet, that should be their decision,” Faehrmann said.

Unsuccessful campaigns for exemptions have previously been waged in NSW.

Dr John Crozier, chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ national trauma committee, said he strongly opposed relaxing the state’s helmet laws.

“I think it would be very misguided,” he said.

While sympathetic to the desire of turban-wearing Sikhs to ride bikes, Crozier said people needed to be protected from risks they often did not fully perceive.

“That is why surgeons are reluctant to relax these laws. We see, daily, the downside of when impact occurs without the protection of a helmet,” he said.

In 2016, the state government’s Centre for Road Safety conducted standard bicycle helmet tests on turbans. It found they offered virtually no impact protection, and wearers risked serious to severe head injuries – and possibly also skull fractures – if their heads hit a solid object in a crash.

Dhir said his group understood the safety concerns but believed riders could assume that risk.

He said they were heartened by research published by Imperial College London in February, which found that, while falling short of wearing a conventional bike helmet, some styles of turban provided better protection than others.

Covering a larger area of the head and placing energy-absorbing materials between layers of the fabric were found to increase protection.

Bicycle NSW chief executive Peter McLean said his organisation would be open to reforms that would allow more people to cycle in the state but believed bike safety was paramount.

“We have a very strong position on bicycle helmets because statistically speaking, we know that they do save lives, but we also want an inclusive bicycle riding environment,” he said.

A Transport for NSW spokesperson said bicycle helmets were the only form of protection for cyclists that had proven effective in preventing brain injury.

“The NSW government is committed to reducing the risk of trauma to all vulnerable road users, including both motorcyclists and bicyclists, who without a helmet have no protection from head injury in the event of a crash,” they said.

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