Today I Learned

I once got two jaywalking tickets in 5 minutes at 9pm in Seattle. Cop was just a jerk. His car was the only car to be seen.

I crossed after he passed, I was in the fucking crosswalk. And then a block later I crossed during the blinking caution and made it to the other side before it was solid.

I contested it in court but this is before Seattle stopped letting cops abuse the law. The judge couldn't really do anything and said that if a cop gives you a ticket you're basically guilty and that's that.

Thankfully Seattle changed it's law after getting bad press for one incident when a Japanese girl was visiting to see Ichiro and the Mariners. When the game got out everyone was walking out and a fucking cop singled her out because she left the crosswalk but there was literally 20 other people doing that same thing. It was clearly racist and to try and keep a massive lawsuit from happening they changed the laws of jaywalking. I'm sure the cops still abuse it for minorities or punks walking around in an empty downtown after hours

I "jaywalk" all the time, and so do many others in my town. Thankfully I live in a country where such nonsense does not exist.

Oddly most other countries have laws which protect people not industry.

'Jay' was, back then, a word that roughly meant 'fool' 'idiot' 'knave' 'hill billy' 'loud mouth' ... something like that.

It literally means 'idiot walking' or 'walking like an idiot'.

They made cars, and decided to tell us we were (and are) all idiots for doing basically the most human thing there is, walking around an environment, as we have been, for literal 10s of thousands of years.

Would you like to hear how the auto industry destroyed electric trolleys so GM could sell diesel buses?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

Also the word “accident.” A collision caused by negligence is not an accident.

America is so inventive!!

You must have removed that stupid law a long time ago right.

Right?

(In France it's always the motorists fault versus a pedestrian. ALWAYS.).

People would be quite surprised to know how many things like this have happened in the last hundred years from both business and government. If you want an eye opener read Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

Also, the word was "Jay"walking was because being called a" jay" is was an insult. It's like a slow person if I remember correctly.

The USA needs the "Verkehrsberuhigter Bereich or Living Street" traffic rule for city center areas packed with restaurants, pubs, and stores. Better yet, close the street to motor vehicles.

The US is also in an fairly select minority with having laws around where you can cross the road as pedestrian.

One of the most surprising thing in old timey movies is that streets were truly mixed-use spaces, people walked there, rode horses, sold things from carts, etc. I guess that was possible because horses and horse-drawn carts were slower than cars, plus horses would generally try to avoid crashing into something, even without orders from their rider or driver.

I always thought that a "street" and a "road" were synonyms, until I heard the term "stroad" from Not Just Bikes. It turns out that in modern planning, a street is meant as a paved path intended to provide local access to homes, shops, and other things. A road is supposed to be a way to get from A to B. A "stroad" is a derogatory term to refer to a street that has been combined with a road, so you get high speed traffic that wants to travel through an area next to homes and businesses.

Stroads are the worst of both worlds because you end up with people who just want to get through an area dealing with kids playing, cars turning onto and off the path, other drivers slowing down to spot an address, etc. It also sucks for the locals because the way onto their driveway or school has to deal with large volumes of high-speed traffic.

IMO we're not going back to horses and carts. High speed movement of people is here to stay. But, we really need to use modes of transport that separate people who are passing through on their way somewhere from people who are exercising, playing sports, shopping, hanging out outside their homes, etc.

The best way to do that is public transit, especially light rail and subways which pack a lot of people into a really efficient people-mover. Subways additionally move the people-mover underground to an area where there's nobody who isn't trying to travel. Light rails are easier to build, but they have to share the above-ground with people doing other things. But, at least when they're on rails the only shared space is the rail, and the pedestrians know that as long as they're not standing on rails they don't have to worry about the light rail vehicles.

For North America, giving up cars might be too difficult, at least in the short term. But, it seems like in newly built neighbourhoods, the least they should do is make it so every second "street" is pedestrian / bicycle only. Or, maybe allow local vehicles but with an incredibly low speed limit, less than 10 km/h and a rule that they must yield to pedestrians at all times. That way someone can still pull into their driveway but they'll only drive half a block on the local street to get there.

"Carbon footprint"

I remember asking a cop in my country if it was okay to "jaywalk". He looked at me like I was fucking stupid and said no ofcourse not, after which I said "ah okay it's just that I read that it's illegal in America". He responded by saying "well this isn't America is it".

Kinda goes to show how america centric the Internet is, and how idiotic some of America's laws are

Oh wow, first time seeing this on Lemmy! Been seeing this exact post on Reddit for over a decade though.

Most jaywalking is fine, but there are instances in which it's legit dangerous.

This is a law that's only as good as how it's enforced by the pigs.

Ive been told that given the language of the time, it roughly translated to "jackass-walking"

Not surprised at all. I don't even need to check it out because I know they deliberately inhibited public transportation to increase profits.

The real question is : who is Jay?