It’s not that weird when you remember that American suburbs are designed to instantly kill anyone who gets out of their house on foot. Teenagers getting cars is what allows them to leave the house on their own without having mom or dad driving them along.
The term ‘jaywalking’ was a clever bit of propaganda from the car firms who had been getting a bit of bad press for that whole ‘killing people’ thing. After a remarkably short time people who dared to exist on the road would be fined and blamed for getting dents in the cars that crushed them. (Slightly exaggerating)
My favourite part of this particular bit of history is that ‘jaydriving’ pre-dated ‘jaywalking’ as a term by a couple decades.
So people had correctly identified that vehicles barging into people and killing them was a problem and created a word for it, which was then taken and turned on the people cars were barging into.
Ah, teenagers with cars, the weirdest bit of americana to us furriners
It’s not that weird when you remember that American suburbs are designed to instantly kill anyone who gets out of their house on foot. Teenagers getting cars is what allows them to leave the house on their own without having mom or dad driving them along.
The term ‘jaywalking’ was a clever bit of propaganda from the car firms who had been getting a bit of bad press for that whole ‘killing people’ thing. After a remarkably short time people who dared to exist on the road would be fined and blamed for getting dents in the cars that crushed them. (Slightly exaggerating)
Crazy how roads were originally long wide pathways, and now it is unlawful and/or deadly to walk on them.
My favourite part of this particular bit of history is that ‘jaydriving’ pre-dated ‘jaywalking’ as a term by a couple decades.
So people had correctly identified that vehicles barging into people and killing them was a problem and created a word for it, which was then taken and turned on the people cars were barging into.