You are right to feel that way, and I think it helps to picture what life was like when the term showed up. These days we take it as almost an immutable fact th

You are right to feel that way, and I think it helps to picture what life was like when the term showed up. These days we take it as almost an immutable fact that cars are on roads, and people are wherever else they can fit. But back then (1910s) streets in city centers were still commonly unsealed dirt roads. While cars were starting to get popular, they still moved at walking pace, and people using roads were still a mix of adults and kids just walking about, bikes, horse drawn buggies or carts. Looking back at photographs from the time you notice that the roads are just full of foot traffic, they weren't crossing the road, the road was how they got around. But cars were getting faster and more dangerous, and it was no longer compatible to have mixed traffic. Rather than ban cars from cities, we convinced people that actually, it was the car's road afterall and you shouldn't have been there! During that time the term jay walking came about, and it was used to paint the pedestrians as the one's getting in the way of the automobile driver, rather than it being the automobile that was out of place. If we use a very cynical lens, and I think we should, it was a essentially a marketing campaign from automobile makers.