Are Runners Allergic to Sidewalks?

[Zaiida]

There has been a spate of walkers on the news getting killed recently because they were wearing heaphones and not paying attention in the last week. 2 were hit by trams and 2 were killed by trains while crossing the track. Sad for everyone involved. And my friends wonder why I don't wear headphones while going for a walk on the street, it's far to easy to get lost in a song and all it takes is a split second of not paying attention and.....you're gone.

I don't even wear headphones while walking along the forest tracks around here because there are surprise 4WD bush bashers and stunt bikers (push bikes and motorcycles and horses) who zoom in from nowhere. Nearly been hit because the forest distorts sound something fierce which can be funny when you run headlong into an adult grey kangaroo, I don't know who ran away faster, me or him. Since I'm nest to a high traffic river the motorboat engines cover any land engine noises.

[Jetfire]

I wear headphones when I walk, but I don't have music blaring in my ears either. I can usually hear what's going on around me, and I do stop and check driveways and streetcorners as I walk to make sure no traffic's coming.

As for runners, I don't drive and they keep making me shake my head. There is a suburb loop right next to my work that the buses go around for the route I'm on. After work, so between 5-6pm in the summer, you'll almost always encounter a flock of runners running down that street, even though it has a perfectly good side walk. It always annoys me when I see that happening.

[kpzra]

Where I lived in Alaska there was a nice, maintained asphalt trail that runs next to the road but down the embankment (~10 foot slope). It went for miles, all the way into town from all 4 directions and out, but people would STILL run in the road. Speed limit is 55 with curves every where. There are accidents almost every day and it's a "safety zone". All of this is why they MADE the trail, I just wish the runners would use it. I like walking the dog on it since I didn't have to worry about him running into traffic.

[EricKei]

...All of this makes me scared for the time -- which may very well be inevitable -- when half of the runners (and likely many drivers!) will be wearing google glasses or some other tech that occupies part of their field of vision while they're on the roads o_O

[Kogarashi]

I wear headphones when I walk, but I don't have music blaring in my ears either. I can usually hear what's going on around me, and I do stop and check driveways and streetcorners as I walk to make sure no traffic's coming.

As I recall, if you're wearing regular headphones (not noise-cancelling ones) and can't hear the sounds of things going on around you, then you've got the volume way too loud. Regular headphones aren't supposed to block out surrounding sounds, just transmit the sound of your ipod/cd player/walkman/whatever to your ears. It always drove me nuts in high school when my sisters would have their headphones loud enough that they couldn't even hear me talking next to them, and thus I could hear their music loud and clear. I pointed out that if I could make out the lyrics of their songs without knowing the song in advance, it was too loud. They'd complain that then the music didn't block anything out, and I'd have to point out that it wasn't supposed to and they were probably damaging their ear drums.

This is also why I tend to not have the music in my car blasting loud enough to shake windows.