The US is also in an fairly select minority with having laws around where you can cross the road as pedestrian.
Probably because they don’t need laws about people, on foot, traveling. It’s part of the constitution that you have freedom for traveling.
They don’t need extra laws to say that yes, you can travel by foot, in a publicly owned space that doesn’t otherwise have laws restricting or prohibiting access to that space, like a military base or something would have…
Operating heavy machinery (automobiles) in the space is generally regulated, by law, and you need a little document to certify that you call legally operate a motor vehicle on public roads, but beyond that, your freedom of movement is otherwise unhindered.
It very quickly becomes a constitutional argument, so even places with laws on the books about jaywalking, have all largely been nullified by freedom of movement enshrined in the constitution; they’re unlawful, and unable to be enforced in any meaningful way.
Long story short: there aren’t anti-jaywalking laws because they don’t require them. Allowing “jaywalking” is a right allowed for by freedom of movement, which is part of the constitution.
Freedom of movement is freedom of movement between States.
It has nothing to do with walking in the middle of the road.
even places with laws on the books about jaywalking, have all largely been nullified by freedom of movement enshrined in the constitution.
The point is that these places are mainly in America (and Germany).
Your own source disproves your post title
Wikipedia
While jaywalking is associated with pedestrians today, the earliest references to “jay” behavior in the street were about horse-drawn carriages and automobiles in 1905 Kansas: “jay drivers” who did not drive on the correct side of the street.[1] The term swiftly expanded to pedestrians, and by 1909, The Chanute Daily Tribune warned “The jay walker needs attention as well as the jay driver, and is about as big a nuisance.”
I think you might be misunderstanding. The word jay was first used on drivers driving wrong, but then the usage expanded to pedestrians too to describe people walking wrong.
The quote literally has a newspaper article from 1909 talking about jay walkers. Jaywalking may have been boosted by the auto industry but it wasn’t invented by them.
It was first used on horses horsing wrong dumbass
To be fair, sometimes my own negligence combined with bad luck almost got me sandwiched…
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.
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.
It was also a slur against Irish people.
Ah, wonderful, hadn’t heard of that, but that is entirely believable.
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
It makes no sense what you are writing. Was your intend to say “of course it is (okay to jaywalk)”?
Soo … It’s also illegal in your country if I’m understanding your comment correctly?
The USA needs the “Verkehrsberuhigter Bereich or Living Street” traffic rule for city center areas packed with restaurants, pubs, and stores. Better yet, close the street to motor vehicles.
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.).
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!
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.
In my small town cars and pedestrians just kinda share the street. Like we take a look at each other and whoever seems to be the most in a hurry goes first. There’s very few traffic lights and crossings. Also very few cars and people, lol.
But back when I lived in a huge city, there was this big commercial street where traffic lights were literally ignored. A car would slowly threaten to run the pedestrians over until they stopped crossing, then the other cars would follow until enough pedestrians started threatening to get run over by the cars, then everyone would follow, and that was it, traffic was controlled by pedestrians’ willingness to die vs drivers’ willingness to kill them.
Worth mentioning that this only worked because that street was so crowded that at certain times of the year you could get an actual pedestrian jam, like the entire street filled with people, barely able to move, and more people constantly arriving.
Also, whenever police showed up, all the unlicensed street merchants would pack up their carts and run through the middle of the street so police wouldn’t steal their merch, cars were just expected to stop for them. Which was weird because the street was always full of regular cops, but there was this special type of cop whose only job was to steal merch from unlicensed merchants. The regular cops just ignored them.
I never understood why cars were allowed on that street, nor why drivers kept using it instead of taking a detour. Needless to say, moving away from that shithole of a city did wonders for my mental (and physical) health.
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.
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.)
Of sauce fame?
Sadly no.
I once got two jaywalking tickets in 5 minutes at 9pm in Seattle. Cop was just a jerk. His car was the only car to be seen.
I crossed after he passed, I was in the fucking crosswalk. And then a block later I crossed during the blinking caution and made it to the other side before it was solid.
I contested it in court but this is before Seattle stopped letting cops abuse the law. The judge couldn’t really do anything and said that if a cop gives you a ticket you’re basically guilty and that’s that.
Thankfully Seattle changed it’s law after getting bad press for one incident when a Japanese girl was visiting to see Ichiro and the Mariners. When the game got out everyone was walking out and a fucking cop singled her out because she left the crosswalk but there was literally 20 other people doing that same thing. It was clearly racist and to try and keep a massive lawsuit from happening they changed the laws of jaywalking. I’m sure the cops still abuse it for minorities or punks walking around in an empty downtown after hours
if a cop gives you a ticket you’re basically guilty and that’s that
Good thing we only let the most upstanding citizens have that kind of authority…
That kind of authority fundamentally should not exist within a just society.
Man, people cannot be trusted to just, “not be dicks”. There are dumb laws but there are also plenty that exist to protect people from assholes and idiots.
“Law” has always meant what those who hold authority over its enforcement says it means. Its origins came from whatever the King decreed, as he was the one who held legal authority at the time.
That system was never intended to do anything other than exert an entity’s will over others via threat of physical violence for disobeying. It was never meant to “uphold justice”, “protect the people”, or whatever moralistic tripe the current ruling class who assumed control of its current manifestation says it means and just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn’t mean the clock works.
We can have mutually agreed upon rules and regulations but that authority to dictate who must follow it has to come from the bottom up. Those who don’t should not be forced into the arrangement against their will but neither should anyone have to associate with those who decide to not abide by it. Other ways of governing ourselves is possible. We know this because history tells us so, as explained by anthropologist David Graeber in many of his works.
That sounds like some psycho ass soverign citizen type nonsense.
Tell me you’ve never heard of “Anarchism” without telling me.
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 “jaywalk” all the time, and so do many others in my town. Thankfully I live in a country where such nonsense does not exist.
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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
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.)
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.
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.
Also the word “accident.” A collision caused by negligence is not an accident.
Driving instructors have been specifically not using the term accident (and calling out students who do use it) for decades where I live.
fun fact : in my industry (firefighting) we have started to move to calling them “mvcs” (mot veh collisions) and not mva (mot veh accidents) for, i assume, that reason. i welcome it!
