I don't believe Nick's introspection here. $1/hour may sound plausible considered as a single choice for 1 hour, but not repeated, as it would be, over a lifetime: if you spend 3 hours a day in a car (which I have for a large period of my life), then he's willing to pay 3 * 365 = $1.1k a year or easily $50k over a lifetime to not wear a helmet? To put this in further perspective, the median American household's income is around that; so by claiming $1/hr, he is implicitly claiming other things like 'if a law were passed mandating wearing a helmet, I and my household would gladly labor like a slave for a year in exchange for an exemption', and so on and so forth. (You can quibble about things like discounting and Nick's probable above-median income and how many hours he actually spends in a car but still - $1/hr is actually quite a bit!)

Further, realistically, habituation and the hedonic treadmill means he would very quickly get used to it as a habit and eventually even come to expect it - like people get used to yarmulkes or old-timey men felt naked without their hats or the deaf/hearing-impaired get so used to their hearing-aids that they forget they are wearing them or how orthodontic patients can survive even the notorious and extremely unpleasant 'head gear'. Or more pertinently, they have already adapted quite nicely to car safety devices far more intrusive, restrictive, and unpleasant than a lightweight helmet: three-point seatbelts.

I am sure Nick really does dislike wearing a helmet to some degree (at least during the adaptation period...), but -$1/hr? No.