Articles: The Invention of Jaywalking

These are a couple related posts, from CityLab and BBC News, about how the automobile industry successfully changed attitudes about the priorities of road use, and turned jaywalking into a punishable offense. Many people are now more outraged by jaywalkers (and by cyclists who roll through STOP signs or run red lights) than they are about car drivers who speed, text and run red lights.

The articles focus on pedestrians and roads, but the history is of interest for cyclists too, and for anyone interested in the development of traffic rules and urban land use regulations.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/

The Invention of Jaywalking
The forgotten history of how the auto industry won the right of way for cars.

SARAH GOODYEAR @buttermilk1 Apr 24, 2012

…

The industry lobbied to change the law, promoting the adoption of traffic statutes to supplant common law. The statutes were designed to restrict pedestrian use of the street and give primacy to cars. The idea of “jaywalking” – a concept that had not really existed prior to 1920 – was enshrined in law.

The current configuration of the American street, and the rules that govern it, are not the result of some inevitable organic process. “It’s more like a brawl,” says Norton. “Where the strongest brawler wins.”

****

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

11 February 2014 Last updated at 19:13 ET

Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road
By Aidan Lewis
BBC News, Washington

…

A key moment, says Norton, was a petition signed by 42,000 people in Cincinnati in 1923 to limit the speed of cars mechanically to 25mph (40kph). Though the petition failed, an alarmed auto industry scrambled to shift the blame for pedestrian casualties from drivers to walkers.

Local car firms got boy scouts to hand out cards to pedestrians explaining jaywalking. “These kids would be posted on sidewalks and when they saw someone starting to jaywalk they’d hand them one of these cards,” says Norton. “It would tell them that it was dangerous and old fashioned and that it’s a new era and we can’t cross streets that way.”

…

Another ruse was to provide local newspapers with a free service. Reporters would submit a few facts about local traffic accidents to Detroit, and the auto industry’s safety committee would send back a full report on the situation in their city.

“The newspaper coverage quite suddenly changes, so that in 1923 they’re all blaming the drivers, and by late 1924 they’re all blaming jaywalking,” Norton says.

Soon, he adds, car lobby groups also started taking over school safety education, stressing that “streets are for cars and children need to stay out of them”. Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s, and became the norm by the 1930s.

In the decades that followed, the cultural ascendancy of the car was secured as the auto industry promoted “America’s love affair with the automobile”. Car makers portrayed them as the ultimate expression of personal freedom, an essential element of the “American dream”.

Meanwhile, an overriding goal of city planners and engineers became allowing traffic to circulate unhindered.

“For years, pedestrians were essentially written out of the equation when it came to designing streets,” says Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic – Why We Drive the Way We Do.

“They didn’t even appear in early computer models, and when they did, it was largely for their role as ‘impedance’ – blocking vehicle traffic.”

…

“People in law-enforcement tend to identify with a motorist’s perspective”, he says. Wherever there’s a push to protect the rights of pedestrians, officials feel they also need to enforce limits on them.

“It’s their version of being fair,” he says. “The difference is that no jaywalking pedestrian ever ran down and killed a driver, and by sheer survival strategy most pedestrians don’t jaywalk in front of cars.”

= = = =

The BBC News article points out that jaywalking is not an offense (offence) in the UK. Their rate of pedestrian deaths is about half that of the U.S., 0.736 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 compared to 1.422 per 100,000 in America.