Originally shared by Zephyr López CervillaThe forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"By Joseph Stromberg (Vox). January 15, 2015
vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history Excerpt:<<
"In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. "But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it's your fault if you get hit."One of the keys to this shift was the creation of the crime of jaywalking. Here's a history of how that happened. >>
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The idea that pedestrians shouldn't be permitted to walk wherever they liked had been present as far back as 1912, when Kansas City passed the first ordinance requiring them to cross streets at crosswalks. But in the mid-twenties, auto groups took up the campaign with vigor, passing laws all over the country.Most notably, auto industry groups took control of a series of meetings convened by Herbert Hoover (then Secretary of Commerce) to create a model traffic law that could be used by cities across the country. Due to their influence, the product of those meetings — the 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance — was largely based off traffic law in Los Angeles, which had enacted strict pedestrian controls in 1925. >>
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Even while passing these laws, however, auto industry groups faced a problem: in Kansas City and elsewhere, no one had followed the rules, and they were rarely enforced by police or judges. To solve it, the industry took up several strategies.One was an attempt to shape news coverage of car accidents. The National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, an industry group, established a free wire service for newspapers: reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic accident, and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. These articles, printed widely, shifted the blame for accidents to pedestrians — signaling that following these new laws was important.Similarly, AAA began sponsoring school-safety campaigns and poster contests, crafted around the importance of staying out of the street. Some of the campaigns also ridiculed kids who didn't follow the rules — in 1925, for instance, hundreds of Detroit school children watched the "trial" of a twelve-year-old who'd crossed a street unsafely, and as Norton writes, a jury of his peers sentenced him to clean chalkboards for a week.This was also part of the final strategy: shame. In getting pedestrians to follow traffic laws, "the ridicule of their fellow citizens is far more effective than any other means which might be adopted," said E.B. Lefferts, the head of the Automobile Club of Southern California in the 1920s. Norton likens the resulting campaign to the anti-drug messaging of 80s and 90s, in which drug use was portrayed not only as dangerous, but stupid. >>
— Joseph Stromberg.
The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking". Vox. January 15, 2015.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history Related pages:
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Episode 76: The Modern Moloch. 99% Invisible. April 4, 2013.99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Legal_issues_by_jurisdiction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaim_the_Streets en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy URL source G+ post:
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