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This is silly. >"Ultimately, both the word jaywalking and the concept that pedestrians shouldn't walk freely on streets became so deeply entrenched that few pe

This is silly. >"Ultimately, both the word jaywalking and the concept that pedestrians shouldn't walk freely on streets became so deeply entrenched that few people know this history" The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation. No. The rules exist now because the majority of people agreed that cars should be given the road and people should be given the sidewalks, and that people darting to and fro on the street would be very bad for everyone involved. Sure the car industry backed these ideas, but people accepted them because they made sense.

Invictus0 9y ago
The article is a historical overview, it's not talking about a "problem". It talks about how the auto industry changed the perception of what streets are for, and clearly, they did such a good job that you can't even imagine a world where roads are not for cars. And yes, cars are bad for pedestrians. They impede their travel, sometimes hit them, cause air and noise pollution, and are highly space inefficient. We allow cars in cities so that we can traverse cities more easily, but from a pedestrian's perspective, cities would be far better without cars.
- walterstucco 9y ago
  Streets have always been for cars in history and been dangerous for pedestrians When I go walking around the Colosseum there's an old Roman street (2 thousand years old give or take) that was built to go faster than walking and it's still hard today with modern shoes to walk on it
jablan 9y ago
There are ways to move around other than driving, you know...
- Spivak 9y ago
  I'll bite, what are my options for moving distances that are too far to walk, too short to fly, and don't involve vehicles?
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    You can use a vehicle that is small and slow enough that it won't kill pedestrians on a collision. For example, a bicycle or a segway. There is also mass transit, which can go over rails away from pedestrians or even underground.
    - shuntress 9y ago
      >which can go over [highways] away from pedestrians or even underground This is also a point for automobiles.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      > a bicycle These only work if the destination isn't an event that requires attendees to be presentable and thus avoid smelling like cyclists. (And if it was close enough for a "casual-effort cycling" then it was close enough to walk, too.) > a segway These are illegal in a huge number of places, iirc.
      - jablan 9y ago
        I am cycling to work, and I don't "smell like a cyclist". It takes 20-25 minutes by bicycle, would take a bit over an hour on foot. Huge number of my colleagues do the same. Pls get your facts right.
dahart 9y ago
> Streets are for cars and sidewalks are for people! That didn't used to be true. I'm fascinated by ideas that become so canonized, so ingrained that you can't even imagine the alternatives. > This article tries to make this seem like a pedestrian dystopia compared to the good ole days when kids could frolic in the streets. Well said, we do live in a pedestrian dystopia now. I love that many urban areas in the US and globally are now designing more pedestrian and bike friendly streets.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  I have found, in NYC at least, bicyclists are a much greater hazard to pedestrians than cars. Bicyclists don't follow traffic rules, veer centimeters away from you while speeding through painted crosswalks, ignore both car and bike-specific traffic lights. I have been nearly hit by bicyclists several times in the last year, and never had any problems with cars. And, in at least two cases, the bicyclists yelled at me for their errors and aggressive biking. It was enough to make me wish I had a steel pipe to stick in their front wheel and laugh in schadenfreude as they get carted off to the hospital. Bikes are worse than cars. Cars respect pedestrians, at least in NYC. Bicyclists are a terror. Just my opinion.
  - dahart 9y ago
    > I have found, in NYC at least, bicyclists are a much greater hazard to pedestrians than cars. I'm sure it feels like that sometimes, and I have no doubt that in NYC that you have witnessed some bad bike behavior, but even in NYC cars are the greater threat to pedestrians by a long, long way. Here are some statistics: Just so you don't have to read through all the links, in the three years 2014+2015+2016, there were 3 pedestrian fatalities and 932 injuries in all accidents between a pedestrian and a bicyclist. In the same time frame, there were 32,217 injuries and 421 fatalities in all accidents between a pedestrian and a car. Between 2002 and 2016, there have been 10 pedestrians who died from a bicycle collision, and 2,345 who died from a car collision. The rate of death from bikes vs cars is 0.42%. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-fatalities-by-bike-motor-vehicle.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data-report-2016.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data-report-2015.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2014-bicycle-crash-data-report.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2014-bicycle-crash... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/10/the-rate-of-pedestrians-injured-by-bicyclists-is-going-down/381013/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/10/the-rate-of-p... Something to keep in mind is that the main reason bikers are behaving badly is defensive biking turned aggressive. It's when they're terrified of cars and don't have a safe space of their own that they act stupid. If we design better biking spaces that are separate from both the driving and the walking spaces, both behavior and safety on the whole will improve. Cities across the US, including NYC, are studying this and have been proving it true for years. > It was enough to make me wish I had a steel pipe to stick in their front wheel and laugh in schadenfreude as they get carted off to the hospital. I hope you never act on that wish, it wouldn't play out well for any party involved. (And, incidentally, it's not schadenfreude if you cause it to happen.) I know that peds, bikers, and drivers at times are all frustrated and scared of the others. Take pity on the minority of assholes, rather than get angry. If we understand they're just scared and acting out, then we can ignore the bad behavior and focus on improving the situation as a whole.
jstanley 9y ago
Just because pedestrians shouldn't walk in the road doesn't mean it needs to be a crime for them to do so. In the UK it's not a crime to walk in the road. It's just a bad idea, for the reasons you mentioned.
- maym86 9y ago
  This. If it's safe to cross and the pedestrian can get across why should there be a ticket. Waiting for a light to change to cross an empty street seems crazy to me.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Why should there be a ticket for not waiting for red arrow to turn green so I can take a left when I could take the same left into a parking lot 500ft down the road? Traffic laws have redundancy to provide damage control for parties that don't follow the rules that apply to them. Cars aren't allowed to hit people. People aren't allowed to cross in certain places. Hopefully at least one party is doing what they're supposed to do at all times.
    - maym86 9y ago
      Works fine in a lot of other countries without Jay walking laws
a-priori 9y ago
Okay that's your opinion, and it's a fine opinion to have. But it's just one way things can work. Another way, is to give pedestrians priority and expect drivers to exercise due caution to not hit them the same way they do other cars or trains or ambulances or whatever. In an alternate universe where the laws had ended up with pedestrian-priority being the norm, then you'd be coming in here saying "Cars shouldn't drive freely on the streets! Streets are for people! People have been walking freely on streets forever and now you're proposing we vacate them for the convenience of drivers?" and so on. So let me ask you this: how are you any more right than alternate-universe-you? Other than the status quo bias that you're defending the way things currently are where you (and I) live.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  You're not understanding the situation. The nature of all parties involved means that what we have now is the optimal compromise. Given the inertia of cars, starting and stopping frequently takes tremendous energy. Cars having to avoid pedestrians would waste tremendous amount of energy. Also when you're driving you're focused on what's in front of you. People darting to and fro on the street is almost impossible to keep track of when you're driving and focused on the road ahead. This is not an opinion. This is fact. And so, taking these facts into account, we've decided a system that optimizes energy use and safety for everyone involved. Pedestrians have sidewalks, cars have streets. Complaining about this system is just silly.
  - Fricken 9y ago
    Why do we grant special entitlements to people who opted to use two tons of steel to move one person? That sounds to me like a reason to place heavy restrictions on their behavior. There's an implicit assumption somehow being in a car makes you more important than someone who isn't. And any argument that presumes a pedestrian is wasting energy over someone who has chosen to drive in a car is absurd.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      Why are you being so reductionist? Drivers have to accept extremely tight restrictions on their behavior already. I feel like I'm talking to an alien that's never driven a car. I mean good lord you have to 6 month class to learn a subset of the rules of the road. The fact that cars are given priority because its more efficient to do so doesn't imply that people think they're more important. In a world with only bikes we would make the same contract so that bikes could go faster. Allowing cars to achieve and maintain speed increases efficiency without impacting pedestrian walk times. Compared to this, a system where roads are shared does waste energy, time, and economic value.
automobiles 9y ago
> If you accept that driving is a good thing Firstly, that's an assumption that not everyone shares — there are alternative solutions to mass transit. Secondly, even if you, say, accept that driving across medium distances — across the city, but not to the corner shop — is a "good thing", that just means that there have to be some large transit roads, intended only for cars; residential streets could still be freely used by pedestrians, either with very stringent speed limits or no car access, at all.
andys627 9y ago
Definitely not. Car dominance is heavily subsidized at all levels of government.

Invictus0 9y ago

The article is a historical overview, it's not talking about a "problem". It talks about how the auto industry changed the perception of what streets are for, and clearly, they did such a good job that you can't even imagine a world where roads are not for cars. And yes, cars are bad for pedestrians. They impede their travel, sometimes hit them, cause air and noise pollution, and are highly space inefficient. We allow cars in cities so that we can traverse cities more easily, but from a pedestrian's perspective, cities would be far better without cars.

walterstucco 9y ago
Streets have always been for cars in history and been dangerous for pedestrians When I go walking around the Colosseum there's an old Roman street (2 thousand years old give or take) that was built to go faster than walking and it's still hard today with modern shoes to walk on it

jablan 9y ago

There are ways to move around other than driving, you know...

Spivak 9y ago
I'll bite, what are my options for moving distances that are too far to walk, too short to fly, and don't involve vehicles?
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  You can use a vehicle that is small and slow enough that it won't kill pedestrians on a collision. For example, a bicycle or a segway. There is also mass transit, which can go over rails away from pedestrians or even underground.
  - shuntress 9y ago
    >which can go over [highways] away from pedestrians or even underground This is also a point for automobiles.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    > a bicycle These only work if the destination isn't an event that requires attendees to be presentable and thus avoid smelling like cyclists. (And if it was close enough for a "casual-effort cycling" then it was close enough to walk, too.) > a segway These are illegal in a huge number of places, iirc.
    - jablan 9y ago
      I am cycling to work, and I don't "smell like a cyclist". It takes 20-25 minutes by bicycle, would take a bit over an hour on foot. Huge number of my colleagues do the same. Pls get your facts right.

dahart 9y ago

> Streets are for cars and sidewalks are for people! That didn't used to be true. I'm fascinated by ideas that become so canonized, so ingrained that you can't even imagine the alternatives. > This article tries to make this seem like a pedestrian dystopia compared to the good ole days when kids could frolic in the streets. Well said, we do live in a pedestrian dystopia now. I love that many urban areas in the US and globally are now designing more pedestrian and bike friendly streets.

SomeHacker44 9y ago
I have found, in NYC at least, bicyclists are a much greater hazard to pedestrians than cars. Bicyclists don't follow traffic rules, veer centimeters away from you while speeding through painted crosswalks, ignore both car and bike-specific traffic lights. I have been nearly hit by bicyclists several times in the last year, and never had any problems with cars. And, in at least two cases, the bicyclists yelled at me for their errors and aggressive biking. It was enough to make me wish I had a steel pipe to stick in their front wheel and laugh in schadenfreude as they get carted off to the hospital. Bikes are worse than cars. Cars respect pedestrians, at least in NYC. Bicyclists are a terror. Just my opinion.
- dahart 9y ago
  > I have found, in NYC at least, bicyclists are a much greater hazard to pedestrians than cars. I'm sure it feels like that sometimes, and I have no doubt that in NYC that you have witnessed some bad bike behavior, but even in NYC cars are the greater threat to pedestrians by a long, long way. Here are some statistics: Just so you don't have to read through all the links, in the three years 2014+2015+2016, there were 3 pedestrian fatalities and 932 injuries in all accidents between a pedestrian and a bicyclist. In the same time frame, there were 32,217 injuries and 421 fatalities in all accidents between a pedestrian and a car. Between 2002 and 2016, there have been 10 pedestrians who died from a bicycle collision, and 2,345 who died from a car collision. The rate of death from bikes vs cars is 0.42%. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-fatalities-by-bike-motor-vehicle.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data-report-2016.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data-report-2015.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2014-bicycle-crash-data-report.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2014-bicycle-crash... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/10/the-rate-of-pedestrians-injured-by-bicyclists-is-going-down/381013/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/10/the-rate-of-p... Something to keep in mind is that the main reason bikers are behaving badly is defensive biking turned aggressive. It's when they're terrified of cars and don't have a safe space of their own that they act stupid. If we design better biking spaces that are separate from both the driving and the walking spaces, both behavior and safety on the whole will improve. Cities across the US, including NYC, are studying this and have been proving it true for years. > It was enough to make me wish I had a steel pipe to stick in their front wheel and laugh in schadenfreude as they get carted off to the hospital. I hope you never act on that wish, it wouldn't play out well for any party involved. (And, incidentally, it's not schadenfreude if you cause it to happen.) I know that peds, bikers, and drivers at times are all frustrated and scared of the others. Take pity on the minority of assholes, rather than get angry. If we understand they're just scared and acting out, then we can ignore the bad behavior and focus on improving the situation as a whole.

jstanley 9y ago

Just because pedestrians shouldn't walk in the road doesn't mean it needs to be a crime for them to do so. In the UK it's not a crime to walk in the road. It's just a bad idea, for the reasons you mentioned.

maym86 9y ago
This. If it's safe to cross and the pedestrian can get across why should there be a ticket. Waiting for a light to change to cross an empty street seems crazy to me.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Why should there be a ticket for not waiting for red arrow to turn green so I can take a left when I could take the same left into a parking lot 500ft down the road? Traffic laws have redundancy to provide damage control for parties that don't follow the rules that apply to them. Cars aren't allowed to hit people. People aren't allowed to cross in certain places. Hopefully at least one party is doing what they're supposed to do at all times.
  - maym86 9y ago
    Works fine in a lot of other countries without Jay walking laws

a-priori 9y ago

Okay that's your opinion, and it's a fine opinion to have. But it's just one way things can work. Another way, is to give pedestrians priority and expect drivers to exercise due caution to not hit them the same way they do other cars or trains or ambulances or whatever. In an alternate universe where the laws had ended up with pedestrian-priority being the norm, then you'd be coming in here saying "Cars shouldn't drive freely on the streets! Streets are for people! People have been walking freely on streets forever and now you're proposing we vacate them for the convenience of drivers?" and so on. So let me ask you this: how are you any more right than alternate-universe-you? Other than the status quo bias that you're defending the way things currently are where you (and I) live.

meri_dian 9y ago
You're not understanding the situation. The nature of all parties involved means that what we have now is the optimal compromise. Given the inertia of cars, starting and stopping frequently takes tremendous energy. Cars having to avoid pedestrians would waste tremendous amount of energy. Also when you're driving you're focused on what's in front of you. People darting to and fro on the street is almost impossible to keep track of when you're driving and focused on the road ahead. This is not an opinion. This is fact. And so, taking these facts into account, we've decided a system that optimizes energy use and safety for everyone involved. Pedestrians have sidewalks, cars have streets. Complaining about this system is just silly.
- Fricken 9y ago
  Why do we grant special entitlements to people who opted to use two tons of steel to move one person? That sounds to me like a reason to place heavy restrictions on their behavior. There's an implicit assumption somehow being in a car makes you more important than someone who isn't. And any argument that presumes a pedestrian is wasting energy over someone who has chosen to drive in a car is absurd.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Why are you being so reductionist? Drivers have to accept extremely tight restrictions on their behavior already. I feel like I'm talking to an alien that's never driven a car. I mean good lord you have to 6 month class to learn a subset of the rules of the road. The fact that cars are given priority because its more efficient to do so doesn't imply that people think they're more important. In a world with only bikes we would make the same contract so that bikes could go faster. Allowing cars to achieve and maintain speed increases efficiency without impacting pedestrian walk times. Compared to this, a system where roads are shared does waste energy, time, and economic value.

automobiles 9y ago

> If you accept that driving is a good thing Firstly, that's an assumption that not everyone shares — there are alternative solutions to mass transit. Secondly, even if you, say, accept that driving across medium distances — across the city, but not to the corner shop — is a "good thing", that just means that there have to be some large transit roads, intended only for cars; residential streets could still be freely used by pedestrians, either with very stringent speed limits or no car access, at all.

andys627 9y ago

Definitely not. Car dominance is heavily subsidized at all levels of government.