Quote Originally Posted by Deanna View Post
I was wondering about the presence of runners in bike lanes a while back, and found out the law (in CA at least) is, they don't belong there if there's a sidewalk. It would be like running down a car lane. Runners are considered pedestrians, so if there's no sidewalk (chances are there's no bike lane), cyclists yield the right of way to the runners as they would any other pedestrians. If there is a sidewalk, a cyclists shouldn't have to swerve into a car lane to avoid a ped in the bike lane.
Deanna, thanks for the research. I was trying to do that myself and then got distracted by something (surprise, surprise). Anyway, I realize that Davis is a unique-being unto itself in many ways cycling-related, but we do have a lot of roads with bike lanes and sidewalks. These tend to be on the edges of town and even out on what most people would consider a farm road, even on campus through the fields. Fortunately, in these instances, the bike lane tends to be very wide so if everyone goes single-file we can pass each other safely. I do as I said, hold my line and I stay to the right. Since in the US, we tend to be a "stay to the right" kind of culture, this makes me more predictable but it does force the runner to be closer to traffic.

One thing to consider is that asphalt is kinder to the joints than cement/concrete so runners tend to migrate to the road. Not to mention they don't like dodging walkers anymore than cyclists do.

Frankly, it's the runners/walkers who are not going against traffic that create the riskier problem.