I’m an urban joggler.
That is, I joggle mostly in the city. And joggling or running in the city can be dangerous. There are cars, trucks, busses, trains, blind alleys, construction equipment, crowds of people and even stray dogs that can cause you harm.
Urban exercise can be dangerous.
You know what makes it more dangerous? Running in headphones.
According to recent research out of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, serious injuries to pedestrians listening to headphones have more than tripled in the last six years. Headphone use has led to what they describe as “inattentional blindness.” People are so engrossed in what they are listening to that they don’t hear the world around them. In a city, this is perilous.
But for me, running without headphones is not an efficient use of my time. I like to listen to audiobooks and doing it while joggling is perfect.
My solution to this distraction problem is to listen with one head phone and leave the other ear free. I think it is a good balance of listening while still being aware of dangers in my environment.
If you are going to run with headphones, keep one ear free.
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suburbia is slightly less dangerous, but that’s no excuse for being a careless runner/joggler!
Great point. There have been a few runners who have been run down on the streets of the suburbs.
It drives me crazy to see how unsafe some runners and walkers are in my neighborhood or other places. I wonder if there’s a positive correlation between skill level and experience in running/walking and safety habits with running/walking. I seem to see more inexperienced runners/walkers acting like they own a road and not getting out of the way of cars in the road who are inexperienced. Nevermind, how dangerous it gets when people walks in pairs or more. We don’t own the road and expect cars to cater to our presences. I take so many precautions as a joggler and I proud to say I joggle safely. There are just too many people out there who put drivers at risk for crashing, or themselves at risk for hitting them. I think runners in general go on auto-pilot sometimes, and then throw in some nice tunes and you have some very unaware folks.
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