NOTE: This is a repost of Troy’s post on his near misses while running. Troy was quoted from this post in January’s 2010 Runner’s World article “Collision Course” (p. 87) by Liz Robbins.

I am blown away at the number of people, young and old alike that have embraced this communication medium.  I too use this quick and efficient tool to communicate with others…the difference?  I don’t do it while I am freakin’ DRIVING!

I love to travel.  It offers countless benefits…especially to runners! The ability to run new courses, terrain,  hills (that may or may not already be named), climate, and definitely new challenges. The “new-ness” makes it fun, motivational, and exciting. Evidently, it also comes with great risks. No I’m not talking about the act of traveling… you know, breaking down on the side of the road, getting car jacked or some strange random occurrence that you read about on the front page of a local newspaper. I’m talking about the silent assassin with the lethal potential to seriously injure or possible kill runners all over the world. That’s right, TEXTING!

If you are a road runner, you have come accustomed to running with full awareness of your surroundings. You must stay alert and focused at all times to avoid being struck by bicyclists, motorists, or even large animals, depending on where you live and definitely WHERE YOU TRAVEL. I am currently in Portland, Oregon – on “vacation” (whatever that means). Regardless of where or what I am supposed to be doing, I will RUN. That’s what you do when you’re a runner…you just RUN, no matter where you happen to be. This time though, I am forced to run on a fairly busy suburban street located in a residential area of SE Portland.

This is where my story begins… I had arrived the night prior (morning actually), at 3:30 a.m. only to rise at 7:30 to hit the road for a quick 9. I am greeted by pleasant temps around 62º and full sun. Perfect! Right? WRONG!!!  About a 1/2 mile into the run I come within feet of being struck by a car driven by a young teenage female as she is making a right turn onto a main road. I look up and notice immediately, she is TEXTING!  I shake my head and run on down the road, thinking to myself, “Chalk that one up to stupidity”. Nearly two miles later as I approach a controlled intersection (running in the opposite direction of on-coming traffic), a car to my left begins to make a right turn; a RIGHT TURN, right into ME. I literally jump out of the bike lane and onto the sidewalk while trying to keep my balance. I looked up just in time to see a 45+ man with his head down, punching on his phone keyboard while trying to make this right turn on red! I gave him a few friendly gestures of “gratitude” and moved on down the road.

It was about this time that I noticed an increasingly high number of dead animals on the road. In fact, I had noticed several earlier in my run. Well, I guess you couldn’t help but notice the amount of road kill because the stench was foul and the carcasses were aplenty. But why? I immediately began my hypothesis, but I needed more quantitative data to support my theory. Moving on down the road now on about mile 6, I am nearly struck again by a motorist who crosses over the bicycle lane path right at me…yep, you guessed it, TEXTING! At this point I am pretty fired up; I am not enjoying the run and merely want to make it back to the house alive. As I come into my last mile stretch of road, I approach an oncoming cyclist (I run in the bike lanes and move to the left when cyclists approach). He is about a half mile away at this point, but still visible enough to have on my Runner’s Radar. I start thinking about my technique and my finishing kick and suddenly the NO-HANDED, CELL PHONE WIELDING, TEXTING cyclist is right in front of me! I quickly jump to the left to prevent colliding with his handle bars and avoid having a crank implanted in my head! Are you kidding me? A cyclist? Impulsively, I wanted to chase him down and knock him off of his bike into tomorrow. But at that point, I just wanted to get home in one piece and get the heck off of this road.

As I turned back in the direction of my course, I nearly tripped over a large dead animal of some variety. The stench was profound and the carcass destroyed. It was then, that I realized, runner’s are treated no differently than animals crossing the road…one way or another, we  are both victims of cell phone wielding idiots across the globe and may end up as road kill…from TEXTING! I am seriously considering forming a coalition called Runner’s Against Texters (RAT). If you are interested in forming a local chapter in your area, please contact us at ORB.

Runners be AWARE. Fight back against the TEXTERS! We think Sexting is a real issue in America? I am officially bringing this serious matter to the media’s attention. The official “brand” for these type of texters is now DEXTING (Driving while Texting), or otherwise now known as DEXTERS. Let us band together as running brothers and sisters and fight back against this abusive, and life threatening behavior of DEXTERS! Rise up my fellow Runners! There is work to be done to keep us all SAFE (Do I sound like a hippie activist picketer yet or what?!?!?).

- RITN, Schritter

Tags: dexters, dexting, Oregon, Portland, RAT, road kill, Runner's radar, sexting, Texters, texting

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