I'm currently dead and awaiting revival

If you get run down from behind, any injuries resulting from cambered roads become somewhat insignificant. Try changing your route to less cambered roads or run well down on the shoulder where it's flatter. Tom

Sorry for getting technical, but I'm an engineer and I used to build roads for a living. Typically, the side slope of the shoulder is designed to be greater than the side slope of the road (in MI, 4% vs. 2%). I realize that design does not always mimic reality. How wide is your "track" when you run? By that I mean, if you were to draw a line through all of your right foot-falls and another line through all of your left foot-falls, what would the distance between the two lines be? I ran a short distance on the beach recently and I would say that my track is about a foot wide. On a road with a 2% crown, the elevation difference between where one foot hits and the other hits is less than a quarter-inch. I'm not a medical expert, or a running expert, but I don't think that little bit of difference is going to cause a problem.

thanks everyone. at least i'm not crazy and it appears that there can be a happy medium without definite death.

You can always do it how I like to... I often run in the middle of night so that I can run right smack in the middle of local residential streets. It is so quiet and dark and I will see/hear the very few cars that I do encounter with plenty of time to spare to get out of the way.

Sorry for getting technical, but I'm an engineer and I used to build roads for a living. Typically, the side slope of the shoulder is designed to be greater than the side slope of the road (in MI, 4% vs. 2%). I realize that design does not always mimic reality.

If the shoulders aren't well maintained (like they aren't around here) they wash out at the bottom and end up pretty flat. I run there a lot. IT issues are a big issue for us road runners and it doesn't take much slope to cause problems. Tom

Hmm, usually run on trails. Sometimes I have to negotiate a few blocks of gravel road to get to a trail. I generally run that one down the center. Cars are really easy to hear, and if it's during the day, they're mostly at work. In winter I may run on relatively flat road (longitudinally), but the snowplows can't get the snow in the gutter area, so it's nice and flat - just wide enough to run on. I run on the side by the abandoned railroad tracks - both directions (about 700m) - since there's no intersections on that side and I'm all the way at edge of non-separated bike lane -not that anyone can see the bike lane lines in winter. The camber on the road is probably greater than 5%. (Trails use 5% outslope for drainage.) Our separated bike path has some right angle turns that cars can't always negotiate in ice - and go sliding off either into the bike path or into the ditch between the two (depending where it happens). I'll use one of the main roads to winter playgrounds in the mountains - on week days after the snow is degenerating even in the mountains = reduced traffic. Some places there's no shoulder. On the gentler sections of the road, the outslope even on the gravel area is waaay more than 5%. On the main part of the hill (about 8% climb), most of the shoulders are much kinder to runners since they're a little flatter since drainage can occur down the road. Then there's the broken shoulders. I generally run on the left side of the road except on a blind corner with no real shoulder, esp. when the snow is deep, then I stay on the outside of the curve. Did I mention the road that DOT built a few years ago that had such steep shoulders (or none, don't remember for sure) that school buses refused to drive on it. When I first moved here almost 29 yr ago, the town only had about 1 mi of paved road, and now has very little that isn't paved (I'm lucky enough to be on gravel /dirt still). The sidewalks are cambered sufficiently that when walking on ice, the people drain into the gutter and road traffic - whereas if you walk in road, you drain away from traffic. Where driveways cross the sidewalks, the camber is even steeper. The engineers have since figured out that's not a good design. Plus the intersections are so close, one's always having to go up and down curbs / ramps. In the main part of town, people tend to use the sidewalks, but in the residential areas, people tend to use the road even when a sidewalk is present. You see why I run trails. Much safer.