This week has solidified that my dad might have been right when he told me I should only run in daylight hours. I follow all of the rules for non-daylight running--my gear is reflective; I stay on the shoulder as long as there is one; I hit the sidewalk on busy roads when possible. But I swear, and I know some of my fellow runners feel this way, that some drivers see a runner and want to show 'em who's boss. In fact, I even just found a website with drivers airing their grievances toward runners in the road. Here are some doozies.
"it is legal, but those people are just morons."
"If you can’t stay at the speed limit and you don’t follow the rules of the road get the hell off the road. This applies to drivers, runners, and bikers. Run ‘em over!"
"In a lot of cases it wouldn’t even be the driver’s fault so you could be stuck with a huge medical bill."
The aggression and lack of attention I've experienced from drivers led me for a while to wonder if I was the one doing wrong. Maybe I'm not supposed to be running in the road. Maybe all of the runners I've seen and met have been breaking pedestrian laws all of this time. Then I found this .PDF about pedestrian laws: http://www.dot.state.oh.us/districts/D10/safety/Documents/Pedestrian_Laws.pdf
According to that file, as long as there is a sidewalk, I am supposed to be on it. On any busy road I do stay on the sidewalk. In residential areas, though, I run in the road. If that's true, I am breaking the law. But as often as I run past cops cruising around at 5:00AM when they are up to nothing, I have never been stopped. I guess it's possible that the .PDF is outdated or even wrong. Whatever the case, I'm going to stick to the roads in neighborhoods. Too many times I have nearly bit it running on an uneven sidewalk. But I guess if I would run in daylight, I'd see those bumps and cracks and they wouldn't be an issue. Problem solved, right? Nope--gonna keep running before and after the sun.
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