I like running in the street for lots of the reasons mentioned, mostly that it allows me to be more visible to traffic, and I can see more traffic. Bikes, cars, everyone rolls stop signs and being in the cross walk is usually more of a hazard than being in the road. Though when I'm running on the roads I usually run fairly far over and only use the road when running on residential streets.

cj's got a great point about the camber in roads, can wreak havoc on IT Bands.