December 13, 2017 • 49 mins
Nearly 100 years ago the crime of “jaywalking” was created. But do you want to know the most surprising part of the story? It’s the groups responsible for getting this law on the books in the first place.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer uh Tyler by the
book Clang. It's his nickname here because he doesn't take
(00:25):
shortcuts and he follows the letter in the spirit of
the law. He's on the straight and narrow. He's on
the straight and narrow, you know what. He's in the
cross walk of life. Hey, not bad, which I don't know,
it's not. It's not our best work, Scott. Thank you, Scott.
I have to ask you. You know, you're you're a
(00:45):
pretty well traveled guy. Sure you've been to a lot
of places you too, well, thank you. Yeah, we've we've
been around right. No, yeah, we haven't been everywhere, but
we've been to several places. It's fairy and I want
to ask you, do you feel like, um, when you
travel to a different city, do you feel that you
(01:08):
behave in a different way as a pedestrian? You know,
like if you're walking around downtown Atlanta versus walking around
say downtown Manhattan or foreign city. I know where you're
going with this, but you know, what it feels like
to me, though, I think I feel like I'm one
of the few that it here is still to the
more American standard of crossing at the crosswalks. It it's
(01:28):
crossing at the corners and in always like that perpendicular
place you're supposed to write at the light. I'm not
one to actually just wander off, but but I mean,
I understand what you're saying, because a lot of times
when you're in another country, another place, different, different location
from what you're accustomed to, it can feel a little
bit chaotic. When you're out on a street, a city street.
Do you how do you? How do you behave you?
(01:48):
You behave in the way that the locals do whatever
they do you do? I feel like you have to
earn that, to be honest with you. When I first
arrived at a city, I try to be very by
the book, right, you have to observe and learn. But
if I'm somewhere for several days, eventually I will just
(02:09):
adapt a win in Rome kind of approach to things,
you know, with the old saying win in Rome, do
as the Romans do. So give me like two days
in New York probably, and then I'm just walking willy nilly,
because you know, the big apples infected me. At that point,
I got places to be well. But you know what,
here's the different thing is that. I mean, okay, that's
(02:30):
got his own dangers, right, I mean it's just busy city.
But let's say you go to Thailand or someplace like
they're somewhere in Spain like Barcelona, and you've got a
lot of moped motorcycle you know, minibike traffic on the
road as well. You're not necessarily looking for that type
of thing when you step off the curb, and that
can be very very dangerous. True, despite their small appearance
and somewhat underpowered engines, those things still can create serious accidents.
(02:55):
Today we're talking about being a pedestrian, driving around pedestrians, crosswalks,
and the rules of crosswalking. I promise our listeners and
this is gonna be a lot more exciting than you
think it might be. Upfront. Here, this is just weird.
It's an interesting story. It's one that been brought to
(03:16):
me and said, hey, we we need to cover this,
and it's really a well done article that we're gonna
follow along with today. This isn't our own research here
this is from somebody else, but but it's fascinating and
it plays right into exactly what we talked about here
on the show, and that's anything and everything ontomotive. Really Yeah,
and I appreciate you putting out that put it putting
out that advanced notice, Scott, because you know the idea
(03:40):
of jaywalking or something that's kind of like insurance, and
it doesn't sound like it might be that interesting in
the beginning, right, But as it turns out, even just
about a hundred years ago, if you and I and
Tyler and you listeners were pedestrians and we wanted to
cross the street, we just went there were no rules, Well,
(04:01):
chances are you are already in the street. Honestly, I mean,
take a look. Here's this is what I found really
fastenating about this. And I hadn't really thought about this
before this until until I read this article. But if
you take a look at photographs, you know, you go
to getty Images or someplace like that, or even just
a Google search and you search you know, pre nineteen
city streets or just city streets nineteen fifteen, something like that,
(04:23):
you're gonna find it. Make sure it's a city street
though that you look up, you're gonna find an atmosphere
that looks a lot like a street carnival, something that's happened,
like a street fair, where there's vendor carts, there's horse
and buggies, there's um children playing in the streets, there's
people selling flowers. I mean they're in the streets, though
they're not on the sidewalks that the sidewalks board for
(04:43):
people passing. There's maybe one aisle in the middle of
it that was left open for pedestrian travel as well.
In the streets, but there's no cars. People are just
hanging out. Now, cars were around, of course, I mean
they had been created I guess twenty years prior to that,
but until about nineteen, you know, right around then, around
(05:03):
that's when cars really started to make a move into
the city with you know a lot of people who
were wealthy could afford them, and we're um, well like
cash by people who weren't all that wealthy could even
afford them. They were starting to become more affordable thanks
to go to old Henry Ford, right, But you know,
it was just it was a different scene altogether. I
guess that the streets were for people, pedestrian traffic, not
(05:24):
car traffic. Yeah, and it's a very interesting dare I
say fascinating change, right, because it's one thing we find
whenever we look at the history of something on car stuff,
whether it's the origin story of Honda or whether it's
the the rise and fall of Tucker, what we find
(05:48):
is that it is stunning and baffling how quickly the
weird is things become normal to everyone, you know, Like,
think about neckties, Man, that's weird. That is weird. Never
talks about that, No, But it was like an overnight thing, right,
you know I did, Uh, I didn't. I don't really know.
I just guess. Yeah. I did an episode on it
(06:08):
for a our everyday science show, brain Stuff. And the
closest we can trace is that it used to be
the Again, folks, this is relatively speculative, but the closest
explanation we can trace for the existence of neckties, which
don't really do anything if you think about it, is
(06:31):
it goes back to military scarves worn by I want
to say Eastern and Eastern European military, but I will
check and get back to that, right. I had a
great uncle that wore a string tie. Umber of those
with the like you would always have like a some
type of like class, yea like a class in the middle.
But it was just a string tie. Yeah, he's he's
(06:53):
a cool Guy's an old mechanic A long long time ago.
This guy was a guy who was born and he
was old when I was young. He was born in
like the eighteen eighties or something. So when I knew him,
he was, you know, up there, eighteen nineties, I guess,
I'm sorry. So when I knew him in the seventies,
you know, he was already in his eighties, and uh,
he just had a unique style to him. He's a
cool guy. Still rocking that bolow is Michael Charlie. Yeah,
(07:16):
Michael Charlie. No, no, my uncle Charlie Yeah. And my
aunt Fanny. That was her name, Fanny have a couple
of names. You know, you probably don't hear all that
off anymore. Um So, anyways, off of bow ties and neckties,
but and onto onto the streets. There is an evolution
that occurred very recently in the way that uh, not
(07:37):
just US cities, but cities around the world treat their
streets and their pedestrians and their drivers. Uh. You know,
this is still a time where in an average small
town in America, it's probably more common to see horses
and carriages than it is to see a Uh I'm
not going to use the pejort of phrase yet, but
(07:58):
to see a car. So how does this how does
this change happen? Scott? Well, then, you know, I think
we first have to talk about is maybe the crime
of jaywalking? Really, I mean, when did it actually become
a crime? I mean and how? Right? Yeah, how did
it become a crime? Because that's probably the most fascinating
part about about this whole thing. Uh So you know
right now, I guess if you want to take just
(08:19):
one city into consideration, is which mentioned in this article.
In Los Angeles, police give out tens of thousands of
tickets per year, every single year, for jaywalking. Some of
these fines are up to two hundred and fifty dollars
a piece. I had no idea that they were even
ticketing people for jaywalking anymore. Right, it feels like one
of those laws that's kind of hard to enforce. I
(08:40):
never see it enforced. I don't. I don't think I do,
because we're not in l A. Man. But apparently, according
to the l A Downtown news. You don't need to
be crossing a red light to receive this jaywalking citation.
You can just step off the curb while they countdown.
Clock is still ticking. Okay, well that's maybe it. Then,
is that people are trying to, you know, to leave early. Maybe, yeah,
(09:02):
trying to go across early, follow the signs. Anyways, that's
probably your best rule of action, I guess on something
like that. So the thing about this is, though, you know,
we think, well, how did how did a crime like
that come about? Like, why is it a crime to
cross the street anywhere else other than the crosswalk? Well,
it's actually the result of a very aggressive and forgotten
nineties campaign. It was led by auto groups and manufacturers
(09:23):
that redefined who owned the city streets. Right, that sounds crazy.
It's a literal turf war sorts. So there's a historian
at the University of Virginia named Peter Norton, and he
points out that in the early days of the automobile,
it was the driver's job to avoid you, not your
(09:43):
job to avoid them. But under the New model, streets
became a place for cars, and as a pedestrian it
became your fault if you got hit Okay, Now, I
always heard that the pedestrians have the right away right,
but I guess not in a jaywalking situation. Yeah, I've
heard in larger cities, at least the majority of pedestrians
(10:05):
in say San Francisco and New York feel that they
always have right of way. Also France, it seems that way. Yeah,
you know, I know, in parking lots, um at crosswalks,
of course, and uh I would I'm trying to think
of where else. I mean, sidewalks, of course, But pedestrians
have right away, um, unless they're stepping out from between
(10:27):
two cars on the street in a normal you know,
a normal traffic lane, I supposed or I don't know
how better to say that, if you're if you're crossing
where you're not supposed to be crossing at a time
not supposed to be crossing, then it's your fault, the pedestrian. Yeah,
and so this this concept, Now, Norton is not just
some guy waxing philosophical. He is the author of a
(10:50):
book called Fighting Traffic, The Dawn of the motor Age
in the American City, and he traces this shift from
pedestrian zone in the street the way they did before
the nineteen twenties to the world in which we live now,
where you know, cars, trucks, motor transit runs the streets.
(11:14):
He traces it to a couple of factors, but the
primary factor is the creation of jaywalking as a crime. Yeah,
so then you have to go back to the way
that the streets used to be concerned or considered a
public space. You know, it was a place where, as
we said, uh, pedestrians, push cards, vendors, horse drawn vehicles,
(11:35):
street cars, children playing things like that. That was not
all that uncommon to see. And you could see that
in any of the photos that you look up. I'm sure, well,
hopefully somebody has done that already and and validated what
we've said, because looks really true. It does look like
a lot of fun. But but it looks like a
street that is closed off to traffic. But that's not
the case. We do see some you know, horse horse
and buggies, some uh, some horse horse drawn wagons I
(11:56):
guess maybe, which are probably delivering goods to the different
stores on the street that we're looking at here in
this article. But it's not an uncommon street scene all
across the United States, all across the world really at
this particular time, you know, pre nineteen um but you know,
during the nineteen tens, you know, I guess all the
nineteen tens and teens, Uh, there were very few crosswalks
that were painted on city streets. It just wasn't something
(12:18):
that was necessary because of the type of situation you're
seeing in those photographs. It just wasn't even required where
you want. Maybe you would need it in a situation
where there were a lot of carriages that would go around,
like a structure for law enforcement or the fire department
or something. But what we found is that even those
few crosswalks that did exist were routinely and uniformly ignored
(12:41):
by pedestrians. Absolutely, And it looks like chaos and streets,
doesn't it, like we were describing it before. But but
here's the thing. In the ninet twenties, you know, I guess,
cars vehicle travel began to spread widely. A lot of
people had cars at this point, and of course with
the increase of cars, that brings along with an unfortunate
consequence when you get into a crowded congestion area like
(13:02):
this in the city, and that's death. Of course, they
would and here's the I guess maybe even the more
troubling part of this whole thing is that often the
victims of these car pedestrian accidents were children or the elderly,
because those were people who tended to be kind of
care free in the streets. I guess, you know, the
kids were playing games, the elderly were crossing without really looking.
They were just you know, they were accustomed to doing
(13:23):
that their whole life. Now they're having to look out
for these these new fangled contraptions. You know, they're that
are blazing along at that super high speeds of you know,
ten fift but very dangerous, very dangerous extreme. I'm kind
of poking fun at it. But the deaths in the streets,
they skyrocketed during this time frame. Yes, skyrocketed is the
correct word. You can trace from nineteen gosh, what would
(13:49):
be nineteen six or nineteen six, nine seven, somewhere in there.
There were what five deaths back then? And then this
isn't all of the United States. This is and we're
talking about auto fate alities, you know, between pedestrians and cars.
And then by nineteen seventeen it had spiked to almost
nine thousand yep. And then by by the time we
(14:09):
get to ninety three, it's up around fifteen thousand, five hundreds.
So you can tell it's a dramatic increase in what
what's that just a fifteen year sixteen years that we've
we've talked about there, and I mean it's it's a
direct correlation. I mean, the more cars in the city,
more more pedestrian deaths, is what happened. Inarguable, the public
(14:30):
response to these deaths was obviously outrage, getting to the
level of a public panic, you know. So what happened
next will tell you after a word from our sponsor.
So here we are. It's still the nineteen twenties. Not
(14:50):
only is the public outraged, but they're calling for the
end of the automobile or intense regulation of the technology.
Can I interrupt you for a second least? All right?
So I remember we've we've talked about Henry Forward so
many times on this program. He as we said, you know,
many many times, he had great guilt over creating this
(15:12):
he didn't create this machine, over creating the affordable car,
because it put it in the hands of so many
and you know that he he had kind of like
a mixed sensation about what he what he had unleashed
on the world. Really, I mean in in that way. Um,
it wasn't that you know, he invented the car. He didn't.
He did find a way to to put it into
the hands of just about everybody, I mean anybody could
(15:32):
afford a car practically. And uh and and as we
see as the number of cars increase, the number of
deaths increase. He also knew that, you know, cities were
having more trouble than just that with the cars, you know,
more trouble than just you know, the pedestrian deaths. Uh,
they're causing a lot of other troubles as well. So, um,
just to think back on that, you know, for for
a while, you know, when you're talking, we're talking about
(15:53):
this era and understand you know what he might be
going through to like his his internal turmoil, because you know,
at this point, the laws governing drivers are very much
in an uh a nascent stage. You know, if you're
listening to the show in friends and neighbors, then you
probably remember either you or if you have children, your
(16:17):
children had to take things like driver's head courses or
Scott and I have talked about in the past. You
either maybe your parents or a family friend. Uh, took
you out in a parking lot and and probably took
the the most beat up manual transmission car they had,
(16:37):
because that's what you want when you want someone to
learn stick exactly. Yeah something, Uh, you don't care if
it's damaged a little bit. You know it's gonna have
to go in for a clutch job anyways. But not
only did that, that sort of preparation not occur nearest frequently.
In addition to this, uh, these cars were difficult to
(16:59):
operate unless you and I and anyone listening to this,
unless we have already had the fortune slash misfortune to
go and attempt to start a model t You know,
it's very difficult to imagine that any of us could
just walk up to one and figure out how to
(17:20):
start it. Oh. Yeah, they were difficult to drive here, right.
There was a lot of multitasking going on behind the wheel,
long long before cell phones. Right. So it's a more
complicated machine with less training. And that's a that's a
huge factor to this. There's another factor here, and I
think this is something that Henry Ford probably thought of
as well. Automobiles even as they became more common or
(17:43):
less uncommon is a more fair word. Even as automobiles
became less uncommon, they were seen as novelties, as uh
rich boy toys. Yeah yeah. And as a matter of fact,
a lot of times pedestrians would call them violent intruders
on the streets. Can you imagine that. I mean, the
streets were for people at that time. That's that's how
(18:04):
they viewed them. So, uh, these violent intruders which came
in and you know killed the children and elderly. As
they saw it, Um, that was quite a problem. So
what were they gonna do. They had to, um find
a way to make them them the bad guy, right,
You're gonna make the cars the bad guy. So the
city started to erect these real prominent memorials for children
that were killed in traffic accidents. And then you know,
(18:26):
newspapers would would cover the deaths and in great detail,
so that um, you know that all the gory details
were involved in it. You know, it would kind of,
you know, really make the the automobile driver look bad,
no matter what the circumstance was. Absolutely, and you know
we we see monuments to traffic accidents today. It's always
(18:47):
a tragic, right sure. Yeah, the roadside memorials things you know,
like the crosses on the highway. Yes, exactly, but for
it to lead to this kind of anti auto propaganda
is strange. And you see headlines where it says, uh
Nation roused against motor killing. Secretary Hoover's conference will suggest
(19:09):
many ways to check the alarming increase of automobile fatalities
with this huge broadsheet picture of an automobile, a gigantic
automobile rolling over um an avenue full of children with
death at the wheel. Yeah, I mean it looks like
the grim reapers driving right, So they would characterize cars
(19:31):
as death and make the car look very sinister, you know,
make the people look like, you know, they were just
laying out on the street waiting to be hit. It
was just, you know, it was a a strange time.
Um in the media, I guess as what they were
trying to do to u create this this push against
the automobile coming into the cities, right, That's really what
it was all about. It was trying to stop stop
(19:53):
that stopped them. It was before um, you don't do
these official trip We talked about traffic laws being a
little bit uh you know, brand new at the time, right, well,
brand new all around, really, so a lot of judges
would rule that in any collision, didn't matter what the
situation was, the larger the vehicle was. The larger vehicle,
I should say, which would be the car in a
(20:13):
car pedestrian situation, was at fault. Now can you imagine
that the larger vehicles always at fault no matter what.
So if you get into an accellent with the bus,
it's the bus's fault if you if you get in
of course car pedestrian car's faults, you know, etcetera. And
they also ruled that if you act, if you killed somebody,
no matter what the circumstance was, it was always um completely,
(20:34):
it's always manslaughter charges, right, regardless of how it went down.
So so it could be an accident that was never intended,
but it was as a manslaughter charge automatically. And you
can also see how during the mid twenties this kicked
in the full swing in Manhattan. They're already an abundance
(20:56):
of you know, lots of Fords, honestly, and then you
see some double anchor buses and stuff, but you still
see a lot of people walking in the street. Yeah,
So okay, so that's that's the interesting part. Go to
the mid nineteen twenties and search city traffic Manhattan or
something like that, you know, whatever you want to search
to get these images. But you'll find that the streets
are crowded with cars and people. So it's kind of
(21:19):
a mix of the two. Now, I'm gonna say that
I think most of the crowd is definitely stand off
to the side. But this is Manhattan wider city sidewalks,
the one that we're looking at right in front of us.
But um, there's still are people in the streets. And
I can't imagine walking down the street this The street
situation here looks like it looks like bad rush hour
traffic and uh and and there are people right in
(21:39):
the middle of it, crossing every which direction. I mean,
it's it's again chaos, right, And as these deaths mount,
activists they're searching for ways to slow it down, you know.
And that's when we start to see different trying to
slow down the cars and slow down the deaths, right, Yeah,
And that's where we see these different approaches coming to play.
(21:59):
This is where we start to see a lot of
the regulation rear its head. In Illustrated World had an
article with the following argument, which I'm going to quote
in a nineteen twenties voice, every car should be equipped
with a device that would hold the speed down to
what have a number of miles stipulated for the city
(22:21):
which its own. I lived cartoonish voice aside, that's a governor.
That's all governor sounds. No, I meant that's a governor
for the car. Oh, that's right, governor. Yes, that is
That's precisely what it is, Scott. It's the idea that no,
no matter, I'm still chuckling over the fact that you
thought I was saying that that was a governor. Was
(22:42):
the quote from the governor? That's funny, I'm sorry, interrupted, No, no, no, no,
it's it's an important point. No matter how clearly the
vehicle is yours, it has to be crippled essentially to
conform worm to the expectations of this city. Yeah, okay,
so we're talking about the mid nineteen twenties. This came
(23:04):
around as early as nineteen twenty three, uh, said Norton.
Remember Norton from earlier on our podcast. He said that
forty two thousand Cincinnati residents signed a petition for a
ballot initiative that would require all cars to have a
governor limiting them to twenty five miles per hour in
the city. And uh, forty two thousand people in Cincinnati. No.
(23:26):
I thought that was a huge number. And I thought, well,
I mean, how many people live in Cincinnati in nineteen
twenty three. So I looked it up, and that's about
ten percent of the entire population it was, So it's
not a huge number, it's it's one in ten. Thought
that that was a good idea, but it's also that's
pretty good for a petition. Yeah, that's not bad for
a petition. Really, I mean to get one out of
ten of every resident in the city to sign that,
(23:48):
that's pretty good. And then also, you know, I can
see the other side of the argument, which is, well,
it's our city. We are we are voting democratically, so
we should collectively get to make the rules. Okay. I
tend to favor more on the side of the the
local auto dealers who decided this is crazy. Oh yeah,
(24:08):
they freaked out. They flipped out. They said, they said, well,
why would we ever do that? How are we supposed
to sell a car? Now? You know, because we're talking
about you know, we're usually talking about more power, more speed,
more agility, you know, the fun sense of the sense
of freeness in driving. Yeah, I mean you're trying to
sell you're selling the sizzle, right, yes, yes, just so, so,
(24:31):
how how do you as an auto dealer? How can
you expect to successfully sell cars, each of which is
very expensive to the average person and significant investment when
you also have to tell them that the car could
go much faster but is not allowed to do. So
what do you call it? The Cincinnati model? You know?
I guess so, yeah, I guess if you live in
(24:52):
the city limit, if you live in Cincinnati, you're limited,
But if you're outside, you're you're free to do whatever
you want, right, you can have that unrestricted are but
you can't bring it into the city. That's the problem.
And so that was the new thing is that you
know they're saying, all right, well, if they're going to
do this, then they're essentially keeping a lot of people
outside of the city. Right, You're not allowed to enter
the city unless you have one of these governors and installed,
(25:15):
and and that's very restricting. So there were a new
rash I guess of of comics that came out, you know, politically,
not not like political comics, but kind of like that
with a political message that was saying, um, you know,
vote no on on these new restrictions that you know,
these groups are trying to install in your car because
it's it's harmful for us, it's harmful for you consumer.
(25:37):
And these were funded by auto dealers who also, by
the way, sent a letter to every single car owner
in the city they could find. And in these depictions
there's there's a little bit of racism in it too,
I would argue. But in these depictions they have proclamations
like visitors to Cincinnati will be arrested if they do
not have governors on their automobiles, which no one said.
(26:01):
I think it was just a fine. Yeah, sure. And
you know in these just have to point this out too.
I mean they clearly cross out where it says, you know,
welcome to our city, motorists, you know that kind of thing.
And then you know below that is a proclamation of
the rules that now you have to follow, right. And
then also it was I believe the proposal would require
(26:21):
the automobile owners to buy the governor, so you would
also be taking a bath on the expense of that. Yeah,
what they were saying, you might be fined or even
jailed if you didn't have a governor at that time.
So you know, of course, the automakers and the groups
that are interested in you know, motor traffic are going
to be against something like this. And I think a
(26:41):
lot of enthusiasts even you know, well they'd be brand
new enthusiasts at the time. We're upset about it. They
didn't want this to happen, and luckily the measure failed,
but it sent a message to different auto manufacturers auto
dealer groups across the country and let them know that
(27:03):
this could be this could be trouble down the road. Yeah,
this is coming. People are gonna start to you know,
either they're they're gonna side up either way on this
on this thing. They're gonna say like, we're now we're
on the side of you know, we do want them
limited in our city. We want governors installed. And you
know the other side is going to be, uh, you know,
some of the guys that quite frankly or paying some
of the city taxes, you know, the big auto dealers,
and of course people that live there that want to
(27:25):
drive a car. They might move out of the city
so they can get an unrestricted vehicle. Um, well maybe
not at that time. I don't know. It seems like
the nineties that would be a little harder to do maybe,
but but yeah, I mean I can see where this
would set up a real a real battle in a
lot of cities, a lot of big cities. Right the
lines are being drawn, Oh sure, yeah, And so we
(27:46):
will explore how crosswalks became a central theater of this
war between auto owners and pedestrians. After a word from
our sponsor Ben when we left, we were going to
talk about how the the crosswalk became kind of a theater,
(28:06):
and now explained that to me. What do you what
do you mean by theater? Oh so, in military terms
you will often hear of a region described as the theater. So,
you know, world War Two you was hear people talking
about the actions in the Pacific theater. So we mean
that sort of sense of theater, not you know, your
(28:27):
local community theater, which there's nothing wrong with I get you,
I understand, I understand, But you know what, a lot
of what happened was actually theatrical age. It really was
works on multiple levels. I think it really does I
was I was wondering where you were going with that,
but I think I think it works on both sides.
So it's a nice job. Thanks man. Alright, So, so
so what happened was, you know, the idea would be
(28:48):
that you know, pedestrians were not or they should not
be permitted to walk just wherever they want. You know,
that was kind of the new push is that, Um,
you know, they couldn't do what they had done in
the past. It wasn't that street fair type environment, and um,
there was I guess new campaigns were pushed to to
promote promote what the sidewalks were all about, what the
(29:09):
what the crosswalks were for, because a lot of people
didn't really even know what crosswalks were for. I mean
they're starting to learn at this point by the midnight,
that's for sure. But um, they decided that, you know,
they were going to with with a great amount of enthusiasm,
try to try to get this message across to school
children so they knew it growing up. And along with
(29:30):
those school children, you know, they would teach their their
parents the same type of rules, right, I mean the
kids would take the message back home to to the
parents and uh and you know, slowly people started to
understand that the sidewalks and the crosswalks or where the
pedestrians should be in the city. And that's not all
they did. They attacked on all fronts. So auto industry
(29:52):
groups also participated in meetings convened by Herbert Hoover, who
then was the Secretary of Commerce, and they wanted to
create a model traffic law that could be used by
cities across the country. Due to their influence, I'm gonna
go ahead and call it what it is, due to
their lobbying, sure possibly bribery. The product of those meetings
(30:16):
was something called the nineteen eight Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance,
and this was based off traffic law in l A,
which had had strict controls over behavior of pedestrians since nine.
But you know what, it goes back even farther than
this if you want to set some kind of precedent
for this whole shore, right, because it goes back to
(30:37):
Kansas City, who passed the very first city ordinance requiring
people to uh to cross the streets across walks, and
that was back in nineteen twelve, So that goes back
even farther. So, um, you know, again by the nineteen twenties,
been by the mid nineteen twenties. This thing is really
caught on and you can see that, you know, spreading
across the nation. Everybody's kind of uh doing what they
can to make sure that you know that this uh,
(30:59):
this battle between pedestrians and cars, their car owners, car sellers,
doesn't spread to their city. Right. And the idea was
just as Scott said, to educate every single pedestrian about
the importance of crossing at a crosswalk. But how did
they do that. They went about it in a bad way, right.
They did it by by shaming the pedestrians. Now I
(31:21):
don't like to use it. I don't like the shaming
where a lot of people throw around the words shaming,
but this is exactly what they're doing, uh to the pedestrians. Right.
So you know these cartoons that we're looking at, these
are these are pro automobile, but anti pedestrian a certain
kind of pedestrian as well. Right. Yeah, of course you
you may remember at the beginning of the show we
mentioned uh pejorative terms, right. One of those was pleasure car,
(31:47):
which is a term that pedestrians and journalists used when
they thought cars were just toys of the wealthy. There's
another term, and I'm not sure how best to interduce this,
uh got because you see what happened is originally the
auto manufacturers and dealers in the auto industry groups got
(32:10):
access to federal meetings right and crafted laws and had
those laws distributed to different cities. But they found a
pretty big problem. The laws would beyond the books, but
no one would enforce it, and the cops and judges
didn't really care either. So they had to take up
(32:31):
some other strategies, which meant kind of fighting dirty. I
was sure, Yeah, yeah. They had to kind of shape
the news coverage to um make the accidents seem even
worse than they really were, I guess maybe, or or
make them seem as if every one of them was
the pedestrian's fault. And that was the the the slant here,
I guess, you know, the angle, even when it wasn't so.
(32:54):
So the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which was an
industry group, established something that they called a it's a
free wire service. And if if you know what a
wire service does for newspapers, uh, they take they take
raw information, they create a story, and they send it
back out right. They distributed as the as the need
to so this wire service for newspapers. These reporters would
send the basic details of a traffic accident from their
(33:15):
small town or city, you know, even if it's a
big city. They could send it in and they would
in return get this complete article that was ready to
print the next day. You know, ready, something ready to
go out, so it's print ready. It was nice for them, right,
but the articles and these were printed everywhere, not just
in the small city that you know they came from
they originated from, but everywhere, so you learn about neighboring
cities as well. Um, the blame for the accident, no
(33:38):
matter what the situation was, would always be shifted toward
the pedestrian. It was always the pedestrians fault in the
in the news stories that would come out from this agency.
So um, the ideal was that it would say, well,
you know what we've been talking about these these these
pedestrian laws. Look how important they are because here's what's happening. Right.
(33:59):
And then they also took propaganda to the kids. Yeah yeah,
we mentioned schools before. They kind of went at them
with with a I don't know, a sense of urgency, right,
because that's how you you kind of bring people up
their whole life understanding that. You know. I guess we've
heard this recently to indoctrination right there, trying to indoctrine
the idea into the children that, um, you know, the
(34:21):
streets aren't for playing, they're not for crossing anywhere, but
the crosswalks. That's this is how it is. It's always been,
not always been this way, but this is the way
it has to be now, and it absolutely worked. We
have one very strange example of this, uh is also
a little theatrical scott in hundreds of school kids in
Detroit watched the quote unquote trial of a twelve year
(34:45):
old who was on trial for crossing the street unsafely,
and a jury of the kids peers sentenced him. Oh
brother to what to clean chalkboards for a week, they
sentenced him. Yes, so this is a mock trial, right,
But you know you know who ran this trial? Who? Yeah,
Triple A of all places. I mean that's the American
(35:06):
Automobile Association and uh and of course I think they
were with other groups as well, you know, kind of
funding this type of thing. But you know, these are
school sponsored safety campaigns and poster contest. They've just again
they made this like a a real pust I mean
kind of you know what. It reminds me of a lot,
and I've seen this elsewhere too. It reminds me of
the anti drug campaigns that were happening in the nineteen eighties.
(35:30):
It's like everybody jumped on board with that stuff. I mean, well,
there's McGruff and there was you know, there were there
were um after school specials. Of course you have to
Nancy Reagan talking about it, you know, to the nation's children.
Uh took well, to the nation really, I mean to everybody.
And it's not that it's a bad thing. It's just
that there's this tremendous push for this thing to happen.
(35:50):
And and that's exactly what was happening with with this
this traffic confraction for pedestrians back in the twenties. And
it goes on because they had this idea that they
could also publicly, as as Scott mentioned, shame people. Right,
(36:11):
So these auto groups asked police to publicly shame transgressors,
embarrass them, whistle shout at them, if they're a woman,
pick them up and carry them back to the sidewalk.
Can you believe that? Which is just humiliated instead of
just writing them and take it or reprimanding them. And
(36:31):
then they staged these they called him safety campaigns, but
it's more like guerilla theater, where they had actors dressed
in nineteenth century clothes or as clowns and then make
a big deal about crossing the street illegally. They would
have safety parades to write where it was an actual
(36:53):
parade in the street and they would have a clown
kind of stumbling along in front of a model T,
and the model T was just repeatedly ramming the guy
who was in front of him because he wasn't following,
you know, the rules. He wasn't on the sidewalk where
he's supposed to be. So weird man. And now we
get to one of the strangest parts of this and
one of the most successful parts of this campaign. They
(37:15):
decided to also wage war in terms of language. They
decided to name the infraction and uh. And the way
that they did that was they took a term at
the time that meant something uh. Again, it was a
pejorative term, as you said, man, It was as a
word J. And the word J at that time meant
something like a ruby or a hick, you know, somebody
(37:36):
from the sticks, somebody that had no understanding of how,
you know, this big city works. A country mouse, Yeah,
that's yeah, that's a good country mouse. So yeah, rub
or a hick, you know, someone who just didn't understand
the way of the world, the way that the big
city worked, and the way the automobile traffic should flow
in a city. Right. So so that's the word J right,
J is like, you know, somebody who's out from the
(37:57):
sticks and uh, And they attached it to to walking.
So you're you're a jay walker, right, I mean, so
jay walker meant like you're just a stupid walker. Really essentially,
that's what that meant. It's your fault. Yeah. And then
of course once that term kind of came around, then
everybody said, well, I'm not a jay walker, you're a
jay driver, and they started attaching it to other things. Right. Meanwhile,
(38:18):
there were probably a few people who really were named
Jay and we're thinking, man, this is just not my
not my time. It's so weird. So jay actually has
some kind of meaning in this whole thing. So, jaywalker,
I've kind of wondered where that term came from me too.
It's weird when you think about it. But but the
anti jaywalking campaign really took off. I mean, it made
a it made a huge difference in the way people
(38:39):
viewed pedestrian traffic and on city streets. And um, I
mean it was it was successful, very successful. I mean
we look at the way that the term, the use
of the term. You know, there are charts that can
show us the use of the word in you know,
print and media, and you can look at a chart
that shows, you know, the word, uh, jaywalking, how it
increases extremely steep during the night eighteen twenties and it
(39:00):
and it carries on. I mean, we still use the
term today. It's it's a popular word even now in
in print and other forms of media still use it.
It's it's it's it's kind of it's not it's not
a bad word. It's not I guess it's kind of
a mean word. Initially. It's kind of lost its meaning though,
I think. I mean, we see it as somebody who
crosses not at the crosswalk, but we don't think of
(39:21):
that as like, you know, you're calling somebody a rube
or a hic, right when you say it. Yeah, you don't.
I don't think most people would know the history of
this because I I certainly had no idea, you know.
And it's yeah, I think it's good that it's lost
a lot of its pejorative thing. It's one of those
(39:43):
many minor infractions that we all think is just sort
of strange, not not not always enforced or seldom enforced.
And I'm I'm guilty of it sometimes I've done it occasionally, right,
Jay walked and and I think everybody has at some point.
You know, you have to cross the street to get
to the bookstore that's over there, and your parked right across,
but you know, to get to the corner, you have
(40:03):
to walk, you know, half a block that way across
the street and walk half a block back when it's
right there, So you crossed the street right where you are.
A lot of people are guilty that some places you
can't do it because you know, the medians built up
in some way, or the traffic is so heavy or
intense that you can't do that. I understand that too,
but um, it was strange. What's really strange to me
is that you know this this word that did come
(40:24):
from something mean spirited. You know, jaywalking was a mean
spirited word to begin with. That law enforcement agencies and
uh and and our law itself picked up that word
as um as. That's that's the standard. That's what we
call this. It's a jaywalking offense, and we just have
never let go of it. I mean, I'm surprised that
they didn't create a new term that was something that
(40:46):
was in a little a little milder. I guess at
the time it didn't hold such power at the time
because now it doesn't, Like we said, it doesn't really
mean a whole lot right now to say the word jaywalker.
But that's probably why it's so successful. It's become it's
emerged as one of the survivors from this strange, uh
(41:07):
strange conflict in American history. And you know, when we're
talking about the graph where you can see the evolution
of it, there's this really cool thing that Google Books
has called Ingraham Viewer. Have you heard of this? Yeah,
I've seen I've seen N. Graham's but I've never used N. Graham.
All it All it is and it's just capital in
(41:27):
like North and then Graham. All it is is this
program where you can type in a word and then
over the past century or so, it shows you the
frequency of use. And so we see that definite spike
that you were talking about, Scott, and it looks like
it's plateau ng and it's just going to stay as
(41:50):
a word in our language. It's gonna be it's gonna
be one of those things where, um, it's gonna be
one of those things like the same eve optioned on
Microsoft word right now, you know what I meant it.
I know what you're talking about exactly because we've said,
we've had this discussion at our desk before. Um, it's
(42:10):
the it's the floppy disk, isn't it? But oh man,
I'm gonna say it. Kids these days don't know that.
No no one knows what a floppy disk is now.
But with yeah, the icon for save is a floppy disk.
And and I guess unless you're a certain age and
that's probably even forty plus around there, I'm going to
guess maybe even maybe a little bit younger, but you
(42:31):
likely don't even know what a floppy disk is. But yeah,
I think you're right. It's one of these words that's
gonna just kind of hang on and no one's really
gonna understand the meaning of it, or I didn't know
the meaning of it. I didn't know that had you
know this this kind of angry start, you know, I
mean just you just never think of where a word
comes from, really until until you hear it, you know,
kind of drawn out like this, you know, why is that?
(42:53):
But it was a very successful campaign, very absolutely and arguably. Yeah, sure,
I mean it completely changed the way people think about
streets and who I guess, who kind of should we
say owns them? Maybe who belongs there? Who doesn't belong there?
And this concludes our story on the strange tale of
how jay walking actually became a crime. Before we go, Scott,
I do have to ask, would you say that overall
(43:18):
this is a good thing? It's a crime? Yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree that it's a good thing. Yeah. I'm
glad to hear you say that because you agree. Oh yeah,
And you know, we see a lot of cities now
passing different laws governing what sort of transportation can be
used in the city, especially a lot of European cities
(43:40):
are very big into that. I don't know if that's
gonna end up happening in the in the United States,
but I for one. I'm very fortunate that I don't
have a governor switch required on my vehicle. I guess
the speed limit is sort of a governing thing, but
it's us governing the vehicle. No, it's not. It's not
(44:00):
a device governing. You know you have to do that.
You know it's your own free will, right so you know.
Here's here's the thing about jaywalking, though. I mean when
I say that I'm glad it's a crime, all I
mean is that it you know, you're not supposed to
do it, it's against the law. But if you surprise
and a motorist by popping out from between a couple
of cars, that terrifying to somebody behind the wheel of
a car. And I'm teaching my daughter how to drive
(44:23):
right now, and it's one of the things that I
warn her about in parking lots, even on small city streets,
is that you've always got to be ready for that
pedestrian to come out of nowhere, that kid to run
out after the ball or you know, dog or whatever.
But um, it is terrifying when somebody kind of emerges
from somewhere that you know they weren't there half a
second ago, and now they're right there. Then you're they're
(44:43):
close enough to you know, make contact with your mirror suddenly.
So that's a little bit scary. UM. So hopefully you
know people are paying attention to the jaywalking laws and
or you know, still crossing at the crosswalk. I try
too as much as I can, Like I said, but
you know, one thing I want to mention here. One
city that is doing a pretty interesting thing to combat
this is is Las Vegas. You've been to Las Vegas.
(45:05):
I don't know how much you've seen of this, but um,
you know, they have a lot of traffic on the
main strip. But what they've they've done a couple of things.
First of all, they have a couple of intersections that
have you know, an escalator and then a bridge system
that crosses all four corners, right so you don't have
to cross you know, you can, I think, but you
don't have to cross at the cross walk down at
the street level. UM, I think. I think maybe there's
(45:25):
something you can't and something that you can do is
do both. Um. The other the other thing that they're
doing is that in the medians there's a little green strip,
you know, a um small just a really smaller it's
not even widen up her car or anything. It's just
got maybe one row of plants or trees or something.
And to prevent people from going from side to side
on those streets, they have to go to the crosswalks.
They they've built fences in that area as well. I've
(45:46):
seen that. Yeah, so it makes it even more difficult
to get over. So you have to you know, not
only climb up this uh this this concrete you know,
short wall like maybe a two football and then over
a fence and then you know, back over the wall
and then across another four lanes of traffic. I mean,
it make it really, really hard. I've seen people trying
to get across that thing because they don't want to
walk down to the next corner and then back, and
it's irritating, it's psychologically irritating. Didn't know that you have
(46:10):
to take this circuitous route. It takes a long time
to walk anywhere in Las Vegas. But they're doing they're
doing a good job, and you know that. Right now,
there are a lot of people who are arguing that
cracking down on jaywalking is not the answer and the
better design for the roads, just like these media inter
mentioning is the correct solution, you know what. I think
(46:31):
that the solution is somewhere in the middle on this.
I think that, you know, we need better design roads,
we need better designed intersections and crosswalks things like that,
but we also need to, like I said, I mean,
use your use your head when you're crossing the street.
Don't don't jump out from in front of a city
bus and expect, you know, no one to be there
because that's a regular lane of traffic. That said that
somebody might be going by at fort or or and
(46:55):
hear me out. Technology is not quite there yet, or
we all have like armored exoskeletons, you know, I would
iron I would love an exo skeleton. I think if
I could have any is that a superpower? Because you know,
people say they'd like to fly, they'd like to be invisible, whatever.
I'd like to have an exo skeleton. I think that
the problem is when you crack that exo skeleton, would
(47:16):
it be mechanical or like a no, I mean like
part of me like like like you know how like
an ant can fall forever forever and just land and
walk away. I would love that top of the building,
just jump off your street level you just walk away.
That's your pick. You'd also would be super strong. Yeah,
that'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it. But that's that's superpower.
I guess it's superpower. Yeah. Yeah, it would be a
(47:39):
superpower and it would make you the king of crosswalks.
You know what. I never thought of the Iron Man
suit thing. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I guess so. Well,
be heavy. I want part of me, you know, like
no extra weight. Don't you think that would get awkward though,
when you're just going about your day to day stuff
like you're pumping gas. I think it would be. That
(47:59):
would be diff a call to maneuver, I think yeah,
And you wouldn't know your own strength did mess up
the pump? Well, it would be. There would be a
learning curve for sure. Uh And this might be an
episode for another day because I think we both have
pretty strong opinions about uh superpowers that we would have.
And I think our super producer Tyler has powers too.
He's about to chime in on the mic, which means
(48:22):
it is time for us to go. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. We'd like to hear your opinion on
the relationship between pedestrians and drivers and how it should
change or how it should remain the same. In the meantime,
you can find Scott Tyler and I on Instagram. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter.
(48:46):
You can find every episode of every show we have
ever done on our website, car Stuff Show dot com.
And if you'd like to clewe us in on a
topic that you think your fellow listeners would enjoy, we'd
love to hear from you. We car stuff at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
(49:09):
of other topics, This is how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. M hmmm,
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer uh Tyler by the
book Clang. It's his nickname here because he doesn't take
(00:25):
shortcuts and he follows the letter in the spirit of
the law. He's on the straight and narrow. He's on
the straight and narrow, you know what. He's in the
cross walk of life. Hey, not bad, which I don't know,
it's not. It's not our best work, Scott. Thank you, Scott.
I have to ask you. You know, you're you're a
(00:45):
pretty well traveled guy. Sure you've been to a lot
of places you too, well, thank you. Yeah, we've we've
been around right. No, yeah, we haven't been everywhere, but
we've been to several places. It's fairy and I want
to ask you, do you feel like, um, when you
travel to a different city, do you feel that you
(01:08):
behave in a different way as a pedestrian? You know,
like if you're walking around downtown Atlanta versus walking around
say downtown Manhattan or foreign city. I know where you're
going with this, but you know, what it feels like
to me, though, I think I feel like I'm one
of the few that it here is still to the
more American standard of crossing at the crosswalks. It it's
(01:28):
crossing at the corners and in always like that perpendicular
place you're supposed to write at the light. I'm not
one to actually just wander off, but but I mean,
I understand what you're saying, because a lot of times
when you're in another country, another place, different, different location
from what you're accustomed to, it can feel a little
bit chaotic. When you're out on a street, a city street.
Do you how do you? How do you behave you?
(01:48):
You behave in the way that the locals do whatever
they do you do? I feel like you have to
earn that, to be honest with you. When I first
arrived at a city, I try to be very by
the book, right, you have to observe and learn. But
if I'm somewhere for several days, eventually I will just
(02:09):
adapt a win in Rome kind of approach to things,
you know, with the old saying win in Rome, do
as the Romans do. So give me like two days
in New York probably, and then I'm just walking willy nilly,
because you know, the big apples infected me. At that point,
I got places to be well. But you know what,
here's the different thing is that. I mean, okay, that's
(02:30):
got his own dangers, right, I mean it's just busy city.
But let's say you go to Thailand or someplace like
they're somewhere in Spain like Barcelona, and you've got a
lot of moped motorcycle you know, minibike traffic on the
road as well. You're not necessarily looking for that type
of thing when you step off the curb, and that
can be very very dangerous. True, despite their small appearance
and somewhat underpowered engines, those things still can create serious accidents.
(02:55):
Today we're talking about being a pedestrian, driving around pedestrians, crosswalks,
and the rules of crosswalking. I promise our listeners and
this is gonna be a lot more exciting than you
think it might be. Upfront. Here, this is just weird.
It's an interesting story. It's one that been brought to
(03:16):
me and said, hey, we we need to cover this,
and it's really a well done article that we're gonna
follow along with today. This isn't our own research here
this is from somebody else, but but it's fascinating and
it plays right into exactly what we talked about here
on the show, and that's anything and everything ontomotive. Really Yeah,
and I appreciate you putting out that put it putting
out that advanced notice, Scott, because you know the idea
(03:40):
of jaywalking or something that's kind of like insurance, and
it doesn't sound like it might be that interesting in
the beginning, right, But as it turns out, even just
about a hundred years ago, if you and I and
Tyler and you listeners were pedestrians and we wanted to
cross the street, we just went there were no rules, Well,
(04:01):
chances are you are already in the street. Honestly, I mean,
take a look. Here's this is what I found really
fastenating about this. And I hadn't really thought about this
before this until until I read this article. But if
you take a look at photographs, you know, you go
to getty Images or someplace like that, or even just
a Google search and you search you know, pre nineteen
city streets or just city streets nineteen fifteen, something like that,
(04:23):
you're gonna find it. Make sure it's a city street
though that you look up, you're gonna find an atmosphere
that looks a lot like a street carnival, something that's happened,
like a street fair, where there's vendor carts, there's horse
and buggies, there's um children playing in the streets, there's
people selling flowers. I mean they're in the streets, though
they're not on the sidewalks that the sidewalks board for
(04:43):
people passing. There's maybe one aisle in the middle of
it that was left open for pedestrian travel as well.
In the streets, but there's no cars. People are just
hanging out. Now, cars were around, of course, I mean
they had been created I guess twenty years prior to that,
but until about nineteen, you know, right around then, around
(05:03):
that's when cars really started to make a move into
the city with you know a lot of people who
were wealthy could afford them, and we're um, well like
cash by people who weren't all that wealthy could even
afford them. They were starting to become more affordable thanks
to go to old Henry Ford, right, But you know,
it was just it was a different scene altogether. I
guess that the streets were for people, pedestrian traffic, not
(05:24):
car traffic. Yeah, and it's a very interesting dare I
say fascinating change, right, because it's one thing we find
whenever we look at the history of something on car stuff,
whether it's the origin story of Honda or whether it's
the the rise and fall of Tucker, what we find
(05:48):
is that it is stunning and baffling how quickly the
weird is things become normal to everyone, you know, Like,
think about neckties, Man, that's weird. That is weird. Never
talks about that, No, But it was like an overnight thing, right,
you know I did, Uh, I didn't. I don't really know.
I just guess. Yeah. I did an episode on it
(06:08):
for a our everyday science show, brain Stuff. And the
closest we can trace is that it used to be
the Again, folks, this is relatively speculative, but the closest
explanation we can trace for the existence of neckties, which
don't really do anything if you think about it, is
(06:31):
it goes back to military scarves worn by I want
to say Eastern and Eastern European military, but I will
check and get back to that, right. I had a
great uncle that wore a string tie. Umber of those
with the like you would always have like a some
type of like class, yea like a class in the middle.
But it was just a string tie. Yeah, he's he's
(06:53):
a cool Guy's an old mechanic A long long time ago.
This guy was a guy who was born and he
was old when I was young. He was born in
like the eighteen eighties or something. So when I knew him,
he was, you know, up there, eighteen nineties, I guess,
I'm sorry. So when I knew him in the seventies,
you know, he was already in his eighties, and uh,
he just had a unique style to him. He's a
cool guy. Still rocking that bolow is Michael Charlie. Yeah,
(07:16):
Michael Charlie. No, no, my uncle Charlie Yeah. And my
aunt Fanny. That was her name, Fanny have a couple
of names. You know, you probably don't hear all that
off anymore. Um So, anyways, off of bow ties and neckties,
but and onto onto the streets. There is an evolution
that occurred very recently in the way that uh, not
(07:37):
just US cities, but cities around the world treat their
streets and their pedestrians and their drivers. Uh. You know,
this is still a time where in an average small
town in America, it's probably more common to see horses
and carriages than it is to see a Uh I'm
not going to use the pejort of phrase yet, but
(07:58):
to see a car. So how does this how does
this change happen? Scott? Well, then, you know, I think
we first have to talk about is maybe the crime
of jaywalking? Really, I mean, when did it actually become
a crime? I mean and how? Right? Yeah, how did
it become a crime? Because that's probably the most fascinating
part about about this whole thing. Uh So you know
right now, I guess if you want to take just
(08:19):
one city into consideration, is which mentioned in this article.
In Los Angeles, police give out tens of thousands of
tickets per year, every single year, for jaywalking. Some of
these fines are up to two hundred and fifty dollars
a piece. I had no idea that they were even
ticketing people for jaywalking anymore. Right, it feels like one
of those laws that's kind of hard to enforce. I
(08:40):
never see it enforced. I don't. I don't think I do,
because we're not in l A. Man. But apparently, according
to the l A Downtown news. You don't need to
be crossing a red light to receive this jaywalking citation.
You can just step off the curb while they countdown.
Clock is still ticking. Okay, well that's maybe it. Then,
is that people are trying to, you know, to leave early. Maybe, yeah,
(09:02):
trying to go across early, follow the signs. Anyways, that's
probably your best rule of action, I guess on something
like that. So the thing about this is, though, you know,
we think, well, how did how did a crime like
that come about? Like, why is it a crime to
cross the street anywhere else other than the crosswalk? Well,
it's actually the result of a very aggressive and forgotten
nineties campaign. It was led by auto groups and manufacturers
(09:23):
that redefined who owned the city streets. Right, that sounds crazy.
It's a literal turf war sorts. So there's a historian
at the University of Virginia named Peter Norton, and he
points out that in the early days of the automobile,
it was the driver's job to avoid you, not your
(09:43):
job to avoid them. But under the New model, streets
became a place for cars, and as a pedestrian it
became your fault if you got hit Okay, Now, I
always heard that the pedestrians have the right away right,
but I guess not in a jaywalking situation. Yeah, I've
heard in larger cities, at least the majority of pedestrians
(10:05):
in say San Francisco and New York feel that they
always have right of way. Also France, it seems that way. Yeah,
you know, I know, in parking lots, um at crosswalks,
of course, and uh I would I'm trying to think
of where else. I mean, sidewalks, of course, But pedestrians
have right away, um, unless they're stepping out from between
(10:27):
two cars on the street in a normal you know,
a normal traffic lane, I supposed or I don't know
how better to say that, if you're if you're crossing
where you're not supposed to be crossing at a time
not supposed to be crossing, then it's your fault, the pedestrian. Yeah,
and so this this concept, Now, Norton is not just
some guy waxing philosophical. He is the author of a
(10:50):
book called Fighting Traffic, The Dawn of the motor Age
in the American City, and he traces this shift from
pedestrian zone in the street the way they did before
the nineteen twenties to the world in which we live now,
where you know, cars, trucks, motor transit runs the streets.
(11:14):
He traces it to a couple of factors, but the
primary factor is the creation of jaywalking as a crime. Yeah,
so then you have to go back to the way
that the streets used to be concerned or considered a
public space. You know, it was a place where, as
we said, uh, pedestrians, push cards, vendors, horse drawn vehicles,
(11:35):
street cars, children playing things like that. That was not
all that uncommon to see. And you could see that
in any of the photos that you look up. I'm sure, well,
hopefully somebody has done that already and and validated what
we've said, because looks really true. It does look like
a lot of fun. But but it looks like a
street that is closed off to traffic. But that's not
the case. We do see some you know, horse horse
and buggies, some uh, some horse horse drawn wagons I
(11:56):
guess maybe, which are probably delivering goods to the different
stores on the street that we're looking at here in
this article. But it's not an uncommon street scene all
across the United States, all across the world really at
this particular time, you know, pre nineteen um but you know,
during the nineteen tens, you know, I guess all the
nineteen tens and teens, Uh, there were very few crosswalks
that were painted on city streets. It just wasn't something
(12:18):
that was necessary because of the type of situation you're
seeing in those photographs. It just wasn't even required where
you want. Maybe you would need it in a situation
where there were a lot of carriages that would go around,
like a structure for law enforcement or the fire department
or something. But what we found is that even those
few crosswalks that did exist were routinely and uniformly ignored
(12:41):
by pedestrians. Absolutely, And it looks like chaos and streets,
doesn't it, like we were describing it before. But but
here's the thing. In the ninet twenties, you know, I guess,
cars vehicle travel began to spread widely. A lot of
people had cars at this point, and of course with
the increase of cars, that brings along with an unfortunate
consequence when you get into a crowded congestion area like
(13:02):
this in the city, and that's death. Of course, they
would and here's the I guess maybe even the more
troubling part of this whole thing is that often the
victims of these car pedestrian accidents were children or the elderly,
because those were people who tended to be kind of
care free in the streets. I guess, you know, the
kids were playing games, the elderly were crossing without really looking.
They were just you know, they were accustomed to doing
(13:23):
that their whole life. Now they're having to look out
for these these new fangled contraptions. You know, they're that
are blazing along at that super high speeds of you know,
ten fift but very dangerous, very dangerous extreme. I'm kind
of poking fun at it. But the deaths in the streets,
they skyrocketed during this time frame. Yes, skyrocketed is the
correct word. You can trace from nineteen gosh, what would
(13:49):
be nineteen six or nineteen six, nine seven, somewhere in there.
There were what five deaths back then? And then this
isn't all of the United States. This is and we're
talking about auto fate alities, you know, between pedestrians and cars.
And then by nineteen seventeen it had spiked to almost
nine thousand yep. And then by by the time we
(14:09):
get to ninety three, it's up around fifteen thousand, five hundreds.
So you can tell it's a dramatic increase in what
what's that just a fifteen year sixteen years that we've
we've talked about there, and I mean it's it's a
direct correlation. I mean, the more cars in the city,
more more pedestrian deaths, is what happened. Inarguable, the public
(14:30):
response to these deaths was obviously outrage, getting to the
level of a public panic, you know. So what happened
next will tell you after a word from our sponsor.
So here we are. It's still the nineteen twenties. Not
(14:50):
only is the public outraged, but they're calling for the
end of the automobile or intense regulation of the technology.
Can I interrupt you for a second least? All right?
So I remember we've we've talked about Henry Forward so
many times on this program. He as we said, you know,
many many times, he had great guilt over creating this
(15:12):
he didn't create this machine, over creating the affordable car,
because it put it in the hands of so many
and you know that he he had kind of like
a mixed sensation about what he what he had unleashed
on the world. Really, I mean in in that way. Um,
it wasn't that you know, he invented the car. He didn't.
He did find a way to to put it into
the hands of just about everybody, I mean anybody could
(15:32):
afford a car practically. And uh and and as we
see as the number of cars increase, the number of
deaths increase. He also knew that, you know, cities were
having more trouble than just that with the cars, you know,
more trouble than just you know, the pedestrian deaths. Uh,
they're causing a lot of other troubles as well. So, um,
just to think back on that, you know, for for
a while, you know, when you're talking, we're talking about
(15:53):
this era and understand you know what he might be
going through to like his his internal turmoil, because you know,
at this point, the laws governing drivers are very much
in an uh a nascent stage. You know, if you're
listening to the show in friends and neighbors, then you
probably remember either you or if you have children, your
(16:17):
children had to take things like driver's head courses or
Scott and I have talked about in the past. You
either maybe your parents or a family friend. Uh, took
you out in a parking lot and and probably took
the the most beat up manual transmission car they had,
(16:37):
because that's what you want when you want someone to
learn stick exactly. Yeah something, Uh, you don't care if
it's damaged a little bit. You know it's gonna have
to go in for a clutch job anyways. But not
only did that, that sort of preparation not occur nearest frequently.
In addition to this, uh, these cars were difficult to
(16:59):
operate unless you and I and anyone listening to this,
unless we have already had the fortune slash misfortune to
go and attempt to start a model t You know,
it's very difficult to imagine that any of us could
just walk up to one and figure out how to
(17:20):
start it. Oh. Yeah, they were difficult to drive here, right.
There was a lot of multitasking going on behind the wheel,
long long before cell phones. Right. So it's a more
complicated machine with less training. And that's a that's a
huge factor to this. There's another factor here, and I
think this is something that Henry Ford probably thought of
as well. Automobiles even as they became more common or
(17:43):
less uncommon is a more fair word. Even as automobiles
became less uncommon, they were seen as novelties, as uh
rich boy toys. Yeah yeah. And as a matter of fact,
a lot of times pedestrians would call them violent intruders
on the streets. Can you imagine that. I mean, the
streets were for people at that time. That's that's how
(18:04):
they viewed them. So, uh, these violent intruders which came
in and you know killed the children and elderly. As
they saw it, Um, that was quite a problem. So
what were they gonna do. They had to, um find
a way to make them them the bad guy, right,
You're gonna make the cars the bad guy. So the
city started to erect these real prominent memorials for children
that were killed in traffic accidents. And then you know,
(18:26):
newspapers would would cover the deaths and in great detail,
so that um, you know that all the gory details
were involved in it. You know, it would kind of,
you know, really make the the automobile driver look bad,
no matter what the circumstance was. Absolutely, and you know
we we see monuments to traffic accidents today. It's always
(18:47):
a tragic, right sure. Yeah, the roadside memorials things you know,
like the crosses on the highway. Yes, exactly, but for
it to lead to this kind of anti auto propaganda
is strange. And you see headlines where it says, uh
Nation roused against motor killing. Secretary Hoover's conference will suggest
(19:09):
many ways to check the alarming increase of automobile fatalities
with this huge broadsheet picture of an automobile, a gigantic
automobile rolling over um an avenue full of children with
death at the wheel. Yeah, I mean it looks like
the grim reapers driving right, So they would characterize cars
(19:31):
as death and make the car look very sinister, you know,
make the people look like, you know, they were just
laying out on the street waiting to be hit. It
was just, you know, it was a a strange time.
Um in the media, I guess as what they were
trying to do to u create this this push against
the automobile coming into the cities, right, That's really what
it was all about. It was trying to stop stop
(19:53):
that stopped them. It was before um, you don't do
these official trip We talked about traffic laws being a
little bit uh you know, brand new at the time, right, well,
brand new all around, really, so a lot of judges
would rule that in any collision, didn't matter what the
situation was, the larger the vehicle was. The larger vehicle,
I should say, which would be the car in a
(20:13):
car pedestrian situation, was at fault. Now can you imagine
that the larger vehicles always at fault no matter what.
So if you get into an accellent with the bus,
it's the bus's fault if you if you get in
of course car pedestrian car's faults, you know, etcetera. And
they also ruled that if you act, if you killed somebody,
no matter what the circumstance was, it was always um completely,
(20:34):
it's always manslaughter charges, right, regardless of how it went down.
So so it could be an accident that was never intended,
but it was as a manslaughter charge automatically. And you
can also see how during the mid twenties this kicked
in the full swing in Manhattan. They're already an abundance
(20:56):
of you know, lots of Fords, honestly, and then you
see some double anchor buses and stuff, but you still
see a lot of people walking in the street. Yeah,
So okay, so that's that's the interesting part. Go to
the mid nineteen twenties and search city traffic Manhattan or
something like that, you know, whatever you want to search
to get these images. But you'll find that the streets
are crowded with cars and people. So it's kind of
(21:19):
a mix of the two. Now, I'm gonna say that
I think most of the crowd is definitely stand off
to the side. But this is Manhattan wider city sidewalks,
the one that we're looking at right in front of us.
But um, there's still are people in the streets. And
I can't imagine walking down the street this The street
situation here looks like it looks like bad rush hour
traffic and uh and and there are people right in
(21:39):
the middle of it, crossing every which direction. I mean,
it's it's again chaos, right, And as these deaths mount,
activists they're searching for ways to slow it down, you know.
And that's when we start to see different trying to
slow down the cars and slow down the deaths, right, Yeah,
And that's where we see these different approaches coming to play.
(21:59):
This is where we start to see a lot of
the regulation rear its head. In Illustrated World had an
article with the following argument, which I'm going to quote
in a nineteen twenties voice, every car should be equipped
with a device that would hold the speed down to
what have a number of miles stipulated for the city
(22:21):
which its own. I lived cartoonish voice aside, that's a governor.
That's all governor sounds. No, I meant that's a governor
for the car. Oh, that's right, governor. Yes, that is
That's precisely what it is, Scott. It's the idea that no,
no matter, I'm still chuckling over the fact that you
thought I was saying that that was a governor. Was
(22:42):
the quote from the governor? That's funny, I'm sorry, interrupted, No, no, no, no,
it's it's an important point. No matter how clearly the
vehicle is yours, it has to be crippled essentially to
conform worm to the expectations of this city. Yeah, okay,
so we're talking about the mid nineteen twenties. This came
(23:04):
around as early as nineteen twenty three, uh, said Norton.
Remember Norton from earlier on our podcast. He said that
forty two thousand Cincinnati residents signed a petition for a
ballot initiative that would require all cars to have a
governor limiting them to twenty five miles per hour in
the city. And uh, forty two thousand people in Cincinnati. No.
(23:26):
I thought that was a huge number. And I thought, well,
I mean, how many people live in Cincinnati in nineteen
twenty three. So I looked it up, and that's about
ten percent of the entire population it was, So it's
not a huge number, it's it's one in ten. Thought
that that was a good idea, but it's also that's
pretty good for a petition. Yeah, that's not bad for
a petition. Really, I mean to get one out of
ten of every resident in the city to sign that,
(23:48):
that's pretty good. And then also, you know, I can
see the other side of the argument, which is, well,
it's our city. We are we are voting democratically, so
we should collectively get to make the rules. Okay. I
tend to favor more on the side of the the
local auto dealers who decided this is crazy. Oh yeah,
(24:08):
they freaked out. They flipped out. They said, they said, well,
why would we ever do that? How are we supposed
to sell a car? Now? You know, because we're talking
about you know, we're usually talking about more power, more speed,
more agility, you know, the fun sense of the sense
of freeness in driving. Yeah, I mean you're trying to
sell you're selling the sizzle, right, yes, yes, just so, so,
(24:31):
how how do you as an auto dealer? How can
you expect to successfully sell cars, each of which is
very expensive to the average person and significant investment when
you also have to tell them that the car could
go much faster but is not allowed to do. So
what do you call it? The Cincinnati model? You know?
I guess so, yeah, I guess if you live in
(24:52):
the city limit, if you live in Cincinnati, you're limited,
But if you're outside, you're you're free to do whatever
you want, right, you can have that unrestricted are but
you can't bring it into the city. That's the problem.
And so that was the new thing is that you
know they're saying, all right, well, if they're going to
do this, then they're essentially keeping a lot of people
outside of the city. Right, You're not allowed to enter
the city unless you have one of these governors and installed,
(25:15):
and and that's very restricting. So there were a new
rash I guess of of comics that came out, you know, politically,
not not like political comics, but kind of like that
with a political message that was saying, um, you know,
vote no on on these new restrictions that you know,
these groups are trying to install in your car because
it's it's harmful for us, it's harmful for you consumer.
(25:37):
And these were funded by auto dealers who also, by
the way, sent a letter to every single car owner
in the city they could find. And in these depictions
there's there's a little bit of racism in it too,
I would argue. But in these depictions they have proclamations
like visitors to Cincinnati will be arrested if they do
not have governors on their automobiles, which no one said.
(26:01):
I think it was just a fine. Yeah, sure. And
you know in these just have to point this out too.
I mean they clearly cross out where it says, you know,
welcome to our city, motorists, you know that kind of thing.
And then you know below that is a proclamation of
the rules that now you have to follow, right. And
then also it was I believe the proposal would require
(26:21):
the automobile owners to buy the governor, so you would
also be taking a bath on the expense of that. Yeah,
what they were saying, you might be fined or even
jailed if you didn't have a governor at that time.
So you know, of course, the automakers and the groups
that are interested in you know, motor traffic are going
to be against something like this. And I think a
(26:41):
lot of enthusiasts even you know, well they'd be brand
new enthusiasts at the time. We're upset about it. They
didn't want this to happen, and luckily the measure failed,
but it sent a message to different auto manufacturers auto
dealer groups across the country and let them know that
(27:03):
this could be this could be trouble down the road. Yeah,
this is coming. People are gonna start to you know,
either they're they're gonna side up either way on this
on this thing. They're gonna say like, we're now we're
on the side of you know, we do want them
limited in our city. We want governors installed. And you
know the other side is going to be, uh, you know,
some of the guys that quite frankly or paying some
of the city taxes, you know, the big auto dealers,
and of course people that live there that want to
(27:25):
drive a car. They might move out of the city
so they can get an unrestricted vehicle. Um, well maybe
not at that time. I don't know. It seems like
the nineties that would be a little harder to do maybe,
but but yeah, I mean I can see where this
would set up a real a real battle in a
lot of cities, a lot of big cities. Right the
lines are being drawn, Oh sure, yeah, And so we
(27:46):
will explore how crosswalks became a central theater of this
war between auto owners and pedestrians. After a word from
our sponsor Ben when we left, we were going to
talk about how the the crosswalk became kind of a theater,
(28:06):
and now explained that to me. What do you what
do you mean by theater? Oh so, in military terms
you will often hear of a region described as the theater. So,
you know, world War Two you was hear people talking
about the actions in the Pacific theater. So we mean
that sort of sense of theater, not you know, your
(28:27):
local community theater, which there's nothing wrong with I get you,
I understand, I understand, But you know what, a lot
of what happened was actually theatrical age. It really was
works on multiple levels. I think it really does I
was I was wondering where you were going with that,
but I think I think it works on both sides.
So it's a nice job. Thanks man. Alright, So, so
so what happened was, you know, the idea would be
(28:48):
that you know, pedestrians were not or they should not
be permitted to walk just wherever they want. You know,
that was kind of the new push is that, Um,
you know, they couldn't do what they had done in
the past. It wasn't that street fair type environment, and um,
there was I guess new campaigns were pushed to to
promote promote what the sidewalks were all about, what the
(29:09):
what the crosswalks were for, because a lot of people
didn't really even know what crosswalks were for. I mean
they're starting to learn at this point by the midnight,
that's for sure. But um, they decided that, you know,
they were going to with with a great amount of enthusiasm,
try to try to get this message across to school
children so they knew it growing up. And along with
(29:30):
those school children, you know, they would teach their their
parents the same type of rules, right, I mean the
kids would take the message back home to to the
parents and uh and you know, slowly people started to
understand that the sidewalks and the crosswalks or where the
pedestrians should be in the city. And that's not all
they did. They attacked on all fronts. So auto industry
(29:52):
groups also participated in meetings convened by Herbert Hoover, who
then was the Secretary of Commerce, and they wanted to
create a model traffic law that could be used by
cities across the country. Due to their influence, I'm gonna
go ahead and call it what it is, due to
their lobbying, sure possibly bribery. The product of those meetings
(30:16):
was something called the nineteen eight Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance,
and this was based off traffic law in l A,
which had had strict controls over behavior of pedestrians since nine.
But you know what, it goes back even farther than
this if you want to set some kind of precedent
for this whole shore, right, because it goes back to
(30:37):
Kansas City, who passed the very first city ordinance requiring
people to uh to cross the streets across walks, and
that was back in nineteen twelve, So that goes back
even farther. So, um, you know, again by the nineteen twenties,
been by the mid nineteen twenties. This thing is really
caught on and you can see that, you know, spreading
across the nation. Everybody's kind of uh doing what they
can to make sure that you know that this uh,
(30:59):
this battle between pedestrians and cars, their car owners, car sellers,
doesn't spread to their city. Right. And the idea was
just as Scott said, to educate every single pedestrian about
the importance of crossing at a crosswalk. But how did
they do that. They went about it in a bad way, right.
They did it by by shaming the pedestrians. Now I
(31:21):
don't like to use it. I don't like the shaming
where a lot of people throw around the words shaming,
but this is exactly what they're doing, uh to the pedestrians. Right.
So you know these cartoons that we're looking at, these
are these are pro automobile, but anti pedestrian a certain
kind of pedestrian as well. Right. Yeah, of course you
you may remember at the beginning of the show we
mentioned uh pejorative terms, right. One of those was pleasure car,
(31:47):
which is a term that pedestrians and journalists used when
they thought cars were just toys of the wealthy. There's
another term, and I'm not sure how best to interduce this,
uh got because you see what happened is originally the
auto manufacturers and dealers in the auto industry groups got
(32:10):
access to federal meetings right and crafted laws and had
those laws distributed to different cities. But they found a
pretty big problem. The laws would beyond the books, but
no one would enforce it, and the cops and judges
didn't really care either. So they had to take up
(32:31):
some other strategies, which meant kind of fighting dirty. I
was sure, Yeah, yeah. They had to kind of shape
the news coverage to um make the accidents seem even
worse than they really were, I guess maybe, or or
make them seem as if every one of them was
the pedestrian's fault. And that was the the the slant here,
I guess, you know, the angle, even when it wasn't so.
(32:54):
So the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which was an
industry group, established something that they called a it's a
free wire service. And if if you know what a
wire service does for newspapers, uh, they take they take
raw information, they create a story, and they send it
back out right. They distributed as the as the need
to so this wire service for newspapers. These reporters would
send the basic details of a traffic accident from their
(33:15):
small town or city, you know, even if it's a
big city. They could send it in and they would
in return get this complete article that was ready to
print the next day. You know, ready, something ready to
go out, so it's print ready. It was nice for them, right,
but the articles and these were printed everywhere, not just
in the small city that you know they came from
they originated from, but everywhere, so you learn about neighboring
cities as well. Um, the blame for the accident, no
(33:38):
matter what the situation was, would always be shifted toward
the pedestrian. It was always the pedestrians fault in the
in the news stories that would come out from this agency.
So um, the ideal was that it would say, well,
you know what we've been talking about these these these
pedestrian laws. Look how important they are because here's what's happening. Right.
(33:59):
And then they also took propaganda to the kids. Yeah yeah,
we mentioned schools before. They kind of went at them
with with a I don't know, a sense of urgency, right,
because that's how you you kind of bring people up
their whole life understanding that. You know. I guess we've
heard this recently to indoctrination right there, trying to indoctrine
the idea into the children that, um, you know, the
(34:21):
streets aren't for playing, they're not for crossing anywhere, but
the crosswalks. That's this is how it is. It's always been,
not always been this way, but this is the way
it has to be now, and it absolutely worked. We
have one very strange example of this, uh is also
a little theatrical scott in hundreds of school kids in
Detroit watched the quote unquote trial of a twelve year
(34:45):
old who was on trial for crossing the street unsafely,
and a jury of the kids peers sentenced him. Oh
brother to what to clean chalkboards for a week, they
sentenced him. Yes, so this is a mock trial, right,
But you know you know who ran this trial? Who? Yeah,
Triple A of all places. I mean that's the American
(35:06):
Automobile Association and uh and of course I think they
were with other groups as well, you know, kind of
funding this type of thing. But you know, these are
school sponsored safety campaigns and poster contest. They've just again
they made this like a a real pust I mean
kind of you know what. It reminds me of a lot,
and I've seen this elsewhere too. It reminds me of
the anti drug campaigns that were happening in the nineteen eighties.
(35:30):
It's like everybody jumped on board with that stuff. I mean, well,
there's McGruff and there was you know, there were there
were um after school specials. Of course you have to
Nancy Reagan talking about it, you know, to the nation's children.
Uh took well, to the nation really, I mean to everybody.
And it's not that it's a bad thing. It's just
that there's this tremendous push for this thing to happen.
(35:50):
And and that's exactly what was happening with with this
this traffic confraction for pedestrians back in the twenties. And
it goes on because they had this idea that they
could also publicly, as as Scott mentioned, shame people. Right,
(36:11):
So these auto groups asked police to publicly shame transgressors,
embarrass them, whistle shout at them, if they're a woman,
pick them up and carry them back to the sidewalk.
Can you believe that? Which is just humiliated instead of
just writing them and take it or reprimanding them. And
(36:31):
then they staged these they called him safety campaigns, but
it's more like guerilla theater, where they had actors dressed
in nineteenth century clothes or as clowns and then make
a big deal about crossing the street illegally. They would
have safety parades to write where it was an actual
(36:53):
parade in the street and they would have a clown
kind of stumbling along in front of a model T,
and the model T was just repeatedly ramming the guy
who was in front of him because he wasn't following,
you know, the rules. He wasn't on the sidewalk where
he's supposed to be. So weird man. And now we
get to one of the strangest parts of this and
one of the most successful parts of this campaign. They
(37:15):
decided to also wage war in terms of language. They
decided to name the infraction and uh. And the way
that they did that was they took a term at
the time that meant something uh. Again, it was a
pejorative term, as you said, man, It was as a
word J. And the word J at that time meant
something like a ruby or a hick, you know, somebody
(37:36):
from the sticks, somebody that had no understanding of how,
you know, this big city works. A country mouse, Yeah,
that's yeah, that's a good country mouse. So yeah, rub
or a hick, you know, someone who just didn't understand
the way of the world, the way that the big
city worked, and the way the automobile traffic should flow
in a city. Right. So so that's the word J right,
J is like, you know, somebody who's out from the
(37:57):
sticks and uh, And they attached it to to walking.
So you're you're a jay walker, right, I mean, so
jay walker meant like you're just a stupid walker. Really essentially,
that's what that meant. It's your fault. Yeah. And then
of course once that term kind of came around, then
everybody said, well, I'm not a jay walker, you're a
jay driver, and they started attaching it to other things. Right. Meanwhile,
(38:18):
there were probably a few people who really were named
Jay and we're thinking, man, this is just not my
not my time. It's so weird. So jay actually has
some kind of meaning in this whole thing. So, jaywalker,
I've kind of wondered where that term came from me too.
It's weird when you think about it. But but the
anti jaywalking campaign really took off. I mean, it made
a it made a huge difference in the way people
(38:39):
viewed pedestrian traffic and on city streets. And um, I
mean it was it was successful, very successful. I mean
we look at the way that the term, the use
of the term. You know, there are charts that can
show us the use of the word in you know,
print and media, and you can look at a chart
that shows, you know, the word, uh, jaywalking, how it
increases extremely steep during the night eighteen twenties and it
(39:00):
and it carries on. I mean, we still use the
term today. It's it's a popular word even now in
in print and other forms of media still use it.
It's it's it's it's kind of it's not it's not
a bad word. It's not I guess it's kind of
a mean word. Initially. It's kind of lost its meaning though,
I think. I mean, we see it as somebody who
crosses not at the crosswalk, but we don't think of
(39:21):
that as like, you know, you're calling somebody a rube
or a hic, right when you say it. Yeah, you don't.
I don't think most people would know the history of
this because I I certainly had no idea, you know.
And it's yeah, I think it's good that it's lost
a lot of its pejorative thing. It's one of those
(39:43):
many minor infractions that we all think is just sort
of strange, not not not always enforced or seldom enforced.
And I'm I'm guilty of it sometimes I've done it occasionally, right,
Jay walked and and I think everybody has at some point.
You know, you have to cross the street to get
to the bookstore that's over there, and your parked right across,
but you know, to get to the corner, you have
(40:03):
to walk, you know, half a block that way across
the street and walk half a block back when it's
right there, So you crossed the street right where you are.
A lot of people are guilty that some places you
can't do it because you know, the medians built up
in some way, or the traffic is so heavy or
intense that you can't do that. I understand that too,
but um, it was strange. What's really strange to me
is that you know this this word that did come
(40:24):
from something mean spirited. You know, jaywalking was a mean
spirited word to begin with. That law enforcement agencies and
uh and and our law itself picked up that word
as um as. That's that's the standard. That's what we
call this. It's a jaywalking offense, and we just have
never let go of it. I mean, I'm surprised that
they didn't create a new term that was something that
(40:46):
was in a little a little milder. I guess at
the time it didn't hold such power at the time
because now it doesn't, Like we said, it doesn't really
mean a whole lot right now to say the word jaywalker.
But that's probably why it's so successful. It's become it's
emerged as one of the survivors from this strange, uh
(41:07):
strange conflict in American history. And you know, when we're
talking about the graph where you can see the evolution
of it, there's this really cool thing that Google Books
has called Ingraham Viewer. Have you heard of this? Yeah,
I've seen I've seen N. Graham's but I've never used N. Graham.
All it All it is and it's just capital in
(41:27):
like North and then Graham. All it is is this
program where you can type in a word and then
over the past century or so, it shows you the
frequency of use. And so we see that definite spike
that you were talking about, Scott, and it looks like
it's plateau ng and it's just going to stay as
(41:50):
a word in our language. It's gonna be it's gonna
be one of those things where, um, it's gonna be
one of those things like the same eve optioned on
Microsoft word right now, you know what I meant it.
I know what you're talking about exactly because we've said,
we've had this discussion at our desk before. Um, it's
(42:10):
the it's the floppy disk, isn't it? But oh man,
I'm gonna say it. Kids these days don't know that.
No no one knows what a floppy disk is now.
But with yeah, the icon for save is a floppy disk.
And and I guess unless you're a certain age and
that's probably even forty plus around there, I'm going to
guess maybe even maybe a little bit younger, but you
(42:31):
likely don't even know what a floppy disk is. But yeah,
I think you're right. It's one of these words that's
gonna just kind of hang on and no one's really
gonna understand the meaning of it, or I didn't know
the meaning of it. I didn't know that had you
know this this kind of angry start, you know, I
mean just you just never think of where a word
comes from, really until until you hear it, you know,
kind of drawn out like this, you know, why is that?
(42:53):
But it was a very successful campaign, very absolutely and arguably. Yeah, sure,
I mean it completely changed the way people think about
streets and who I guess, who kind of should we
say owns them? Maybe who belongs there? Who doesn't belong there?
And this concludes our story on the strange tale of
how jay walking actually became a crime. Before we go, Scott,
I do have to ask, would you say that overall
(43:18):
this is a good thing? It's a crime? Yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree that it's a good thing. Yeah. I'm
glad to hear you say that because you agree. Oh yeah,
And you know, we see a lot of cities now
passing different laws governing what sort of transportation can be
used in the city, especially a lot of European cities
(43:40):
are very big into that. I don't know if that's
gonna end up happening in the in the United States,
but I for one. I'm very fortunate that I don't
have a governor switch required on my vehicle. I guess
the speed limit is sort of a governing thing, but
it's us governing the vehicle. No, it's not. It's not
(44:00):
a device governing. You know you have to do that.
You know it's your own free will, right so you know.
Here's here's the thing about jaywalking, though. I mean when
I say that I'm glad it's a crime, all I
mean is that it you know, you're not supposed to
do it, it's against the law. But if you surprise
and a motorist by popping out from between a couple
of cars, that terrifying to somebody behind the wheel of
a car. And I'm teaching my daughter how to drive
(44:23):
right now, and it's one of the things that I
warn her about in parking lots, even on small city streets,
is that you've always got to be ready for that
pedestrian to come out of nowhere, that kid to run
out after the ball or you know, dog or whatever.
But um, it is terrifying when somebody kind of emerges
from somewhere that you know they weren't there half a
second ago, and now they're right there. Then you're they're
(44:43):
close enough to you know, make contact with your mirror suddenly.
So that's a little bit scary. UM. So hopefully you
know people are paying attention to the jaywalking laws and
or you know, still crossing at the crosswalk. I try
too as much as I can, Like I said, but
you know, one thing I want to mention here. One
city that is doing a pretty interesting thing to combat
this is is Las Vegas. You've been to Las Vegas.
(45:05):
I don't know how much you've seen of this, but um,
you know, they have a lot of traffic on the
main strip. But what they've they've done a couple of things.
First of all, they have a couple of intersections that
have you know, an escalator and then a bridge system
that crosses all four corners, right so you don't have
to cross you know, you can, I think, but you
don't have to cross at the cross walk down at
the street level. UM, I think. I think maybe there's
(45:25):
something you can't and something that you can do is
do both. Um. The other the other thing that they're
doing is that in the medians there's a little green strip,
you know, a um small just a really smaller it's
not even widen up her car or anything. It's just
got maybe one row of plants or trees or something.
And to prevent people from going from side to side
on those streets, they have to go to the crosswalks.
They they've built fences in that area as well. I've
(45:46):
seen that. Yeah, so it makes it even more difficult
to get over. So you have to you know, not
only climb up this uh this this concrete you know,
short wall like maybe a two football and then over
a fence and then you know, back over the wall
and then across another four lanes of traffic. I mean,
it make it really, really hard. I've seen people trying
to get across that thing because they don't want to
walk down to the next corner and then back, and
it's irritating, it's psychologically irritating. Didn't know that you have
(46:10):
to take this circuitous route. It takes a long time
to walk anywhere in Las Vegas. But they're doing they're
doing a good job, and you know that. Right now,
there are a lot of people who are arguing that
cracking down on jaywalking is not the answer and the
better design for the roads, just like these media inter
mentioning is the correct solution, you know what. I think
(46:31):
that the solution is somewhere in the middle on this.
I think that, you know, we need better design roads,
we need better designed intersections and crosswalks things like that,
but we also need to, like I said, I mean,
use your use your head when you're crossing the street.
Don't don't jump out from in front of a city
bus and expect, you know, no one to be there
because that's a regular lane of traffic. That said that
somebody might be going by at fort or or and
(46:55):
hear me out. Technology is not quite there yet, or
we all have like armored exoskeletons, you know, I would
iron I would love an exo skeleton. I think if
I could have any is that a superpower? Because you know,
people say they'd like to fly, they'd like to be invisible, whatever.
I'd like to have an exo skeleton. I think that
the problem is when you crack that exo skeleton, would
(47:16):
it be mechanical or like a no, I mean like
part of me like like like you know how like
an ant can fall forever forever and just land and
walk away. I would love that top of the building,
just jump off your street level you just walk away.
That's your pick. You'd also would be super strong. Yeah,
that'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it. But that's that's superpower.
I guess it's superpower. Yeah. Yeah, it would be a
(47:39):
superpower and it would make you the king of crosswalks.
You know what. I never thought of the Iron Man
suit thing. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I guess so. Well,
be heavy. I want part of me, you know, like
no extra weight. Don't you think that would get awkward though,
when you're just going about your day to day stuff
like you're pumping gas. I think it would be. That
(47:59):
would be diff a call to maneuver, I think yeah,
And you wouldn't know your own strength did mess up
the pump? Well, it would be. There would be a
learning curve for sure. Uh And this might be an
episode for another day because I think we both have
pretty strong opinions about uh superpowers that we would have.
And I think our super producer Tyler has powers too.
He's about to chime in on the mic, which means
(48:22):
it is time for us to go. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. We'd like to hear your opinion on
the relationship between pedestrians and drivers and how it should
change or how it should remain the same. In the meantime,
you can find Scott Tyler and I on Instagram. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter.
(48:46):
You can find every episode of every show we have
ever done on our website, car Stuff Show dot com.
And if you'd like to clewe us in on a
topic that you think your fellow listeners would enjoy, we'd
love to hear from you. We car stuff at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
(49:09):
of other topics, This is how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. M hmmm,
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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