A helmet to me is more about safety. I wear my helmet 90% of the time since I got more serious into my riding. For me when I ride on the road I 99.9% of the time always wear my helmet. In my area the cagers are aggressive and pricks. Suburban cagers that always drive everywhere and complain about being fat.

Tho what I have experienced while riding on the bike paths/trails/rivines is that you could ride slow without a helmet and the chance of head injury is IMHO less then on the road, in residential streets, or on the sidewalk. Tho I would still wear my helmet whenever I ride for safety reasons. As someone said before and I agree with, concussions you can heal, scrapes while painful you can heal, broken limbs can heal, but if the head takes permenent damage you're screwed.

If the helmet looks goofy too you or something and you want to look more stylish then spring the extra fundage for one of those stylish helmet.

Zero_Enigma