JEFFERSON CITY — Gov. Jay Nixon said today that he will veto a bill that would have repealed Missouri’s helmet law for motorcyclists, keeping in place a law safety advocates say saves lives.

Motorcycle enthusiasts have been trying to repeal the mandatory helmet law for a couple of decades, and this is the second time the Legislature agreed with them. In 1993, then-Gov. Mel Carnahan vetoed a similar repeal.

Lawmakers argued that it was a freedom issue, siding with cyclists who find the helmets stifling and unnecessary.

Pete Rahn, Missouri’s director of the department of transportation, had been lobbying Nixon hard to veto the bill. In a news conference last month, Rahn pointed to a survey that said Missourians overwhelmingly want motorcyclists to wear helmets. Rahn said repealing the law will lead to deaths, based on highway statistics that show riders without helmets are more likely to die.

Until today, Nixon had been mostly silent on the issue. He disagreed with advocates for the law who said that the governor had given them assurances he would sign it. And he chided Rahn for spending public money on a lobbying effort. Rahn’s actions caused Nixon to veto $33,000 in MoDOT’s budget, the same amount of federal money the transportation department had spent on the survey.

In the end, though, Nixon ended up on Rahn’s side.

“In terms of lives and of dollars, the cost of repealing Missouri’s helmet law simply would have been too high,” Gov. Nixon said. “By keeping Missouri’s helmet law intact, we will save numerous lives, while also saving Missouri taxpayers millions of dollars in increased health care costs. Keeping our helmet law in place was the safe and cost-effective choice for Missouri.”