Ive been told that given the language of the time, it roughly translated to “jackass-walking”
Hah, yeah that probably is a better translation than ‘idiot-walking’, ‘jackass-walking’.
According to ethymonline:
by 1912, American English (said in original citation to be a Kansas City term), from jay, perhaps with notion of boldness and impudence. Related: Jaywalk; jaywalker.
People would be quite surprised to know how many things like this have happened in the last hundred years from both business and government. If you want an eye opener read Propaganda by Edward Bernays.
Of sauce fame?
Sadly no.
The documentary Century of the Self is also educational if you want an overview of Bernays’ life and crimes against humanity. (Adam Curtis is such a good filmmaker.)
More than shift blame, but change the nature of streets from supporting all forms of transportation and functioning as third spaces (streets were used for commerce, play, and socializing) to automobile dominated transportation only spaces.
One of the most surprising thing in old timey movies is that streets were truly mixed-use spaces, people walked there, rode horses, sold things from carts, etc. I guess that was possible because horses and horse-drawn carts were slower than cars, plus horses would generally try to avoid crashing into something, even without orders from their rider or driver.
I always thought that a “street” and a “road” were synonyms, until I heard the term “stroad” from Not Just Bikes. It turns out that in modern planning, a street is meant as a paved path intended to provide local access to homes, shops, and other things. A road is supposed to be a way to get from A to B. A “stroad” is a derogatory term to refer to a street that has been combined with a road, so you get high speed traffic that wants to travel through an area next to homes and businesses.
Stroads are the worst of both worlds because you end up with people who just want to get through an area dealing with kids playing, cars turning onto and off the path, other drivers slowing down to spot an address, etc. It also sucks for the locals because the way onto their driveway or school has to deal with large volumes of high-speed traffic.
IMO we’re not going back to horses and carts. High speed movement of people is here to stay. But, we really need to use modes of transport that separate people who are passing through on their way somewhere from people who are exercising, playing sports, shopping, hanging out outside their homes, etc.
The best way to do that is public transit, especially light rail and subways which pack a lot of people into a really efficient people-mover. Subways additionally move the people-mover underground to an area where there’s nobody who isn’t trying to travel. Light rails are easier to build, but they have to share the above-ground with people doing other things. But, at least when they’re on rails the only shared space is the rail, and the pedestrians know that as long as they’re not standing on rails they don’t have to worry about the light rail vehicles.
For North America, giving up cars might be too difficult, at least in the short term. But, it seems like in newly built neighbourhoods, the least they should do is make it so every second “street” is pedestrian / bicycle only. Or, maybe allow local vehicles but with an incredibly low speed limit, less than 10 km/h and a rule that they must yield to pedestrians at all times. That way someone can still pull into their driveway but they’ll only drive half a block on the local street to get there.
This might sound stupid, but basically, go to St Denis in RDR2.
Just… walk around, like a yokel, like a jay, lol.
That, then imagine cars as basically horseless buggies, at basically the same speeds as horses or horse drawn buggies.
Everyone either instinctively slows down, or is mandated to, because people are assumed to be able to amble and meander across the street.
Anyone moving faster than approximately 15mph is basicslly just assumed to be either a criminal or in some kind of emergency.
Its also kind of like boats in a marina… you slow to speeds such that you do not produce a wake.
Having high speed thoroughfares going straight through a downtown is literally insane, stroads are a diabolical abomination, as is the entirety of low density design that places the car as primary, above the human.
What is it, hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, or another of douglas adam’s stories, where alien observers assume automobiles are the dominant form of life on the planet, that humans are just odd parasites that simply tend to enter and exit from them at times?
At this point, I would genuinely prefer the literal horseshit of horses in cities, over the much, much grander scale of horseshit imposed on us by car centric paradigms for personal transport.
I remember asking a cop in my country if it was okay to “jaywalk”. He looked at me like I was fucking stupid and said no ofcourse not, after which I said “ah okay it’s just that I read that it’s illegal in America”. He responded by saying “well this isn’t America is it”.
Kinda goes to show how america centric the Internet is, and how idiotic some of America’s laws are
Soo … It’s also illegal in your country if I’m understanding your comment correctly?
It makes no sense what you are writing. Was your intend to say “of course it is (okay to jaywalk)”?
Not surprised at all. I don’t even need to check it out because I know they deliberately inhibited public transportation to increase profits.
‘Jay’ was, back then, a word that roughly meant ‘fool’ ‘idiot’ ‘knave’ ‘hill billy’ ‘loud mouth’ … something like that.
It literally means ‘idiot walking’ or ‘walking like an idiot’.
They made cars, and decided to tell us we were (and are) all idiots for doing basically the most human thing there is, walking around an environment, as we have been, for literal 10s of thousands of years.
It was also a slur against Irish people.
Ah, wonderful, hadn’t heard of that, but that is entirely believable.
Not only that, but they tried to restrict movement in an open public space. Which is hilariously bad, because you have the right to freedom of travel. There are restriction on travel even in publicly owned spaces, like government buildings and military bases, etc, and even operating heavy machinery (automobiles) on roads, but it’s hard to argue that we should restrict ambulatory movement in an otherwise open public space, and not have it deemed unconstitutional.
Most jaywalking is fine, but there are instances in which it’s legit dangerous.
This is a law that’s only as good as how it’s enforced by the pigs.
To be fair. It is illegal to walk access highways in Europe too. But it’s not a generic law.
Also the highway is usually fenced in, making it clear that in this case you’re not supposed to be there.
If it’s an access-limited highway, sure. In the US, a highway is a road, street, or parkway or pedestrian or bicyclist facility; there are broader definitions abroad.
But in Europe there are usually pedestrian footpaths to lead you around or over it. In the US walking is simply not considering an option at all.
America is so inventive!!
You must have removed that stupid law a long time ago right.
Right?
(In France it’s always the motorists fault versus a pedestrian. ALWAYS.).
It hasn’t been removed, per se, but the definition has changed. It’s not necessarily jaywalking to cross outside of a crosswalk. If you look both ways and only cross when it’s safe, you’re fine. If you walked out directly into oncoming traffic, then you can get a ticket, even tho the law also states pedestrians always have the right of way and cars need to yield to them.
The city I used to live in years ago had to install blaring pa systems on all of their city busses to announce turn signals. Yes, u would walk through downtown and hear the ripta bus screaming “left turn, left turn” on repeat because so many pedestrians can’t be bothered to look up from their phone and the city busses kept hitting idiots with zero situational awareness to the point people demand the city do something about it. The best part is that didn’t stop people from walking out in front of busses because half the time they have earphones in and can’t get their face out of their reels on their phones. When you are the slow and vulnerable one you really should be watching out for things that can squash you!
I “jaywalk” all the time, and so do many others in my town. Thankfully I live in a country where such nonsense does not exist.
Thankfully I live in a country where jaywalking is both illegal and law is enforced. Thank God drivers don’t have to deal with the pedestrian BS.
I’m sorry that pedestrians existing hurts your fragile fee-fees. You don’t own the roads here, carbrain.
As the operator of a multi-ton hunk of steel travelling at high speeds, it is your responsibility to watch your surroundings and look for people crossing the road. If that upsets you so much, don’t drive.
My responsibility is to respect the traffic rules. Responsibility of pedestrians is also to respect the traffic rules. I don’t want some retard to walk straight under the car, die, and paralyze the traffic. Nobody wants this. Nobody likes jaywalkers. Not me, not police, not the insurance companies, not people who need to scrape the splatter from the street at the cost of taxpayer money.
Use the fucking crosswalk retard.
You seem unaware that accidents like that are lower in countries that don’t have jaywalking laws. It’s as simple as keeping speed limits in areas where people would do that low enough and also not have cars parked along every fucking street so both the drivers and pedestrians can see.
You’re clearly incredibly brainwashed in only being able to see how it works where you live, and you’re unable to see even the improvements that could be done there without rebuilding everything.
It’s real sad seeing that level of ignorance and idiocy without any self reflection.You seem unaware that accidents like that are lower in countries that don’t have jaywalking laws.
Source or it didn’t happen.
Nice job devolving into calling me a slur, that’ll show me for disagreeing with you! Not. Next time, be a better person, 'kay?
Next time, be a better person, 'kay?
Next time be a better person, follow the law and use the crosswalk.
There’s no laws against not using the crosswalk, as I have previously established. Jaywalking is not a crime in Canada, nor the province I live in. I, and many others in my city cross the road anywhere it’s convenient and drivers are well aware and used to it. Nobody gets hurt as long as you pay attention to and yield to oncoming traffic.
In my country the law is that if there is a crosswalk within a certain distance, 25 meters if I recall, you have to use the crosswalk. Otherwise you are allowed to cross elsewhere after making sure the road is free.
(How do you know how long 25 meters is? Most trams in my city are 35 meters long, so if an entire tram platform is between the nearest crosswalk and you, it’s legal there.)
Same here. Technically, jaywalking is illegal but the police does not enforce it.
But in case of accident, you might be at fault. In my country, if there’s a crossing within some number of meters, you need to use it. Otherwise, it’s not illegal.
Here it’s always the driver at fault, pedestrians are zero-fault (even if it should be their fault)
As it should be imo.
Well yeah, it’s obvious it should be
Would you like to hear how the auto industry destroyed electric trolleys so GM could sell diesel buses?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was basically a documentary.
just capitalists doing capitalism. :(
See also: identity theft.
I couldn’t find anything suggesting that?!
Also, the word was “Jay"walking was because being called a” jay" is was an insult. It’s like a slow person if I remember correctly.
“Jay” was a term for a country person who moved to the city. Like “hick” or “yokel”. They called it jaywalking because jays would visit the city and wander across the street without checking for traffic first. Because they weren’t used to the road being busy out in the country. So it became a fairly common thing for traffic to get held up because some yokel casually wandered across the street while looking at billboards and shop signs, instead of looking at the traffic. Thus, jaywalking.
According to wiki, The term jay-walking originated in the United States as a derivation of the phrase Jay-driver, referring to people who drove horse-drawn carriages and automobiles on the wrong side of the road. You are right about the “jay” part which is a derogatory term referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people.
The real question is : who is Jay?
Jay was a deregatory term for country immigrant to the city. Like “yokel”.
Was it? I assumed it had to do with birds.
Yokelwalking would be so much better
That’s not fun, I wanted it to be like it was actually Jay Smith who walked across a street in Boston and the cars stopped, resulting in a massive traffic jam, as a result they passed this law.
You need to go farther back than that. The term jaywalking seems to have originated in Kansas City, MO. I have a feeling they were still just a little salty the Jayhawkers won.
