I’m reading my email one insomniac night when I see this Quora question: Why is jaywalking a crime in the US but not in the UK? One lengthy response from a guy named Tom Chambers:
Because jaywalking is a crime invented by the car industry in the early 20th century. It wasn’t the legislative response to an inevitable problem, but essentially a publicity campaign to increase car use in the US.
Prior to jaywalking becoming a popular term and crime, pedestrians were assumed to have the right to the road. If there was an accident, popular opinion and the media would be on the side of the pedestrian and assume the fault of the driver.
The motor industry recognised that this was an impediment to driving and set out to make the street a place for cars not people. They lobbied for various laws to prevent people from crossing other than at a designated point, but people were so against this that it failed to be effectively enforced.
What worked much better was public ridicule.
The American love affair with cars was no accident, confirmed Scientific American. “Schools helped train new generations of children to avoid the streets when the American Automobile Association (AAA) became the top supplier of safety curriculum for U.S. schools in the 1920s,” As a result, there is a deep-seated bias in transportation decision making that can be traced “all the way back to the dawn of the automotive era.”
But the deal wasn’t sealed until 1961, and one can blame, or credit, Groucho Marx:
It was on Sunday night [October 22] when NBC aired a program called “Merrily We Roll Along”—promoted as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.” During the show, host Groucho Marx introduced the “love affair” metaphor to millions of viewers, casting cars as “the new girl in town.” To make this love work, Marx explained, Americans were willing to overcome intrusive regulations, endure awful traffic jams, and if necessary, redesign entire cities.
“We don’t always know how to get along with her, but you certainly can’t get along without her,” said Marx. “And if that isn’t marriage, I don’t know what is.”
[The show] was less a story about America’s existing love affair with the car than the invention of that very idea. The show’s sponsor, DuPont, had an obvious interest: it owned 23 percent of General Motors at the time. [It was] a “masterstroke of public relations” manufactured by the car industry to counter the likes of… critics who, at the dawn of the interstate highway era, questioned the wisdom of dedicating every inch of urban street space to personal vehicles.
This perhaps explains why people choose cars, even when mass transit would serve them better. But the American love affair with the motor car may be running on empty, with “baby boomers… giving up the suburbs for communities with more travel choices, [and] younger adults… delaying getting a driver’s license and, when they do, they are not buying cars or using them as much. Instead, they are embracing new forms of ‘collaborative consumption’ – sharing vehicles through car-share and bike-share programmes.”
Personally, I think this is a terrific trend. Now if I can only walk across the street, or ride my bike without possibly getting killed…
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Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.
The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!
AMEN!!! Great post. I so agree with you. Great post.
Interesting. I liked the response of Tom Chambers.
An interesting and true perspective on the car industry and obsession with cars! If there was a taxi, or a bus, or a street car out here in the sticks I would gladly flag it down!!
I’ve gone with cars too but one could say from a different perspective. I must admit I always think of the US having a love affair with cars (but don’t think you are alone) although just think of all those road trip, car chase movies.
I read that my Camry was the best for the long haul, 200,000 miles, so I decided to go for it. I have only 170,000 miles yet to go…
Didn’t know this about jaywalking.
My ABC WEDNESDAY
I believe the love of specific cars can also say a lot about a person’s personality. Happy ABC Wednesday!
It took me about ten minutes in Los Angeles to discover that, car culture or no, pedestrians, in the legal sense anyway, trump drivers.
Chaz- true in an Diego too. As a pedestrian, I stood waiting, and the driver looked at me, thinking, “What’s this dummy waiting for?”
ROG, ABCW
Very interesting Roger! It would be great if the U.S. had better mass transit options. I’m always impressed when traveling in Great Britain with their options! Of course I also need to say that the roads in the U.S. are a lot easier to travel on then in the U.K.
Yes, in this empire there are many economic interests.
Very interesting. Same thing is catching up in India too.
The UK is inundated with road vehicles and the motorways are in a general state of disrepair. The country is too small to cope with the ever growing traffic.
Interesting case for jaywalking, most enlightening!
best wishes,
Di.
ABCW team.
Overhere in The Netherlands… people can get annoyed by jaywalkers but its not a crime (not yet?) …
We’ll just have to wait and see what in the future lies abouth this.
I have noticed in the States that if people could take a car from their kitchen to the bedroom they would do it !
I can still hear Dianah Shore singing this song!!! Our city is late to the bike lanes but have started creating them now.
Ann
One of the things I liked about living in San Francisco was being able to get around without a car. I could walk or take public transportation. Bicycling was too crazy for me, but I did drive a motor scooter for the last several years I was there. Living back in a small town, I find myself getting in the car to do a bunch of errands a few miles away.
The View from the Top of the Ladder
Coming from a rural area, it is hard to envision life without car; but my kids living in suburban areas embrace the mass transits available♪
American Cars are very big. Been connecting with all friends when we were studying in Canada. We used to rent Oldsmobile so we could go for outings.
Never gave it much thought at how Jaywalking law ever got started, very interesting for sure. I think now and days there should be much wider driveways for it seems to each family there are usually more than one car trying to share the same driveway, here at my house, S has his own car and I have my own car and the driveway is just too small for two cars, and the street is always loaded with too many cars and not enough parking space to be found.