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.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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Of sauce fame?
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.
Oh wow, first time seeing this on Lemmy! Been seeing this exact post on Reddit for over a decade though.
Did you know Snoop Dogg sold weed to Cameron Diaz in high school or Steve Buscemi was a volunteer firefighter on 9/11
Let me tell you something about LOTR and Vigga Mortensen and the kicking of a helmet ....
They did surgery on a grape
More than shift blame, but change the nature of streets from supporting all forms of transportation and functioning as third spaces (streets were used for commerce, play, and socializing) to automobile dominated transportation only spaces.
Also the word “accident.” A collision caused by negligence is not an accident.
fun fact : in my industry (firefighting) we have started to move to calling them “mvcs” (mot veh collisions) and not mva (mot veh accidents) for, i assume, that reason. i welcome it!
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.
Same here. Technically, jaywalking is illegal but the police does not enforce it.
But in case of accident, you might be at fault. In my country, if there's a crossing within some number of meters, you need to use it. Otherwise, it's not illegal.
Here it's always the driver at fault, pedestrians are zero-fault (even if it should be their fault)
As it should be imo.
Well yeah, it's obvious it should be
I once got two jaywalking tickets in 5 minutes at 9pm in Seattle. Cop was just a jerk. His car was the only car to be seen.
I crossed after he passed, I was in the fucking crosswalk. And then a block later I crossed during the blinking caution and made it to the other side before it was solid.
I contested it in court but this is before Seattle stopped letting cops abuse the law. The judge couldn't really do anything and said that if a cop gives you a ticket you're basically guilty and that's that.
Thankfully Seattle changed it's law after getting bad press for one incident when a Japanese girl was visiting to see Ichiro and the Mariners. When the game got out everyone was walking out and a fucking cop singled her out because she left the crosswalk but there was literally 20 other people doing that same thing. It was clearly racist and to try and keep a massive lawsuit from happening they changed the laws of jaywalking. I'm sure the cops still abuse it for minorities or punks walking around in an empty downtown after hours
if a cop gives you a ticket you're basically guilty and that's that
Good thing we only let the most upstanding citizens have that kind of authority...
That kind of authority fundamentally should not exist within a just society.
Man, people cannot be trusted to just, "not be dicks". There are dumb laws but there are also plenty that exist to protect people from assholes and idiots.
"Law" has always meant what those who hold authority over its enforcement says it means. Its origins came from whatever the King decreed, as he was the one who held legal authority at the time.
That system was never intended to do anything other than exert an entity's will over others via threat of physical violence for disobeying. It was never meant to "uphold justice", "protect the people", or whatever moralistic tripe the current ruling class who assumed control of its current manifestation says it means and just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn't mean the clock works.
We can have mutually agreed upon rules and regulations but that authority to dictate who must follow it has to come from the bottom up. Those who don't should not be forced into the arrangement against their will but neither should anyone have to associate with those who decide to not abide by it. Other ways of governing ourselves is possible. We know this because history tells us so, as explained by anthropologist David Graeber in many of his works.
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
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was basically a documentary.
just capitalists doing capitalism. :(
Oddly most other countries have laws which protect people not industry.
Citation needed. I'm not 100% sure about written law, but in Germany we learn to look before crossing the street and using a traffic light if one is near.
Good Climate Town episode where he mentions this and more car related shenanigans: https://youtu.be/oOttvpjJvAo
(I think it's the right video)
"Carbon footprint"
The real question is : who is Jay?
Jay was a deregatory term for country immigrant to the city. Like "yokel".
Was it? I assumed it had to do with birds.
That's not fun, I wanted it to be like it was actually Jay Smith who walked across a street in Boston and the cars stopped, resulting in a massive traffic jam, as a result they passed this law.
You need to go farther back than that. The term jaywalking seems to have originated in Kansas City, MO. I have a feeling they were still just a little salty the Jayhawkers won.
Yokelwalking would be so much better
Ive been told that given the language of the time, it roughly translated to "jackass-walking"
According to ethymonline:
by 1912, American English (said in original citation to be a Kansas City term), from jay, perhaps with notion of boldness and impudence. Related: Jaywalk; jaywalker.
See also: identity theft.
I couldn't find anything suggesting that?!