I realized today that I've never posted about how the term "jaywalking" was created in the 1920s as a way for car-manufacturers to make room for their products within what had been public space for all people.
I was reminded of it when I saw (once again) this cartoon, which was used on a safety poster at that time:
According to a 2015 Vox article, the legal aspect of limited street use really got going in 1925 in Los Angeles. It then quickly became national with help from Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and the creation of a Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance, which gave us the mandatory use of perpendicular crosswalks.
Shaming the "jays" — a synonym at the time for "hick" or "rube" — soon followed. (Imagine if they'd chosen hickwalking or rubewalking instead. Wouldn't that be strange? Maybe we stopped using jay because it was part of jaywalking, and would have stopped using hick or rube instead of one of those had been the word of choice.)
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The Vox article is largely based on material from University of Virginia historian Peter Norton, including his Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street.
The podcast 99% Invisible has an episode on jaywalking (because of course it does!).
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