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- bluesheep@sh.itjust.worksEnglish3 hours
I remember asking a cop in my country if it was okay to “jaywalk”. He looked at me like I was fucking stupid and said no ofcourse not, after which I said “ah okay it’s just that I read that it’s illegal in America”. He responded by saying “well this isn’t America is it”.
Kinda goes to show how america centric the Internet is, and how idiotic some of America’s laws are
6 hours‘Jay’ was, back then, a word that roughly meant ‘fool’ ‘idiot’ ‘knave’ ‘hill billy’ ‘loud mouth’ … something like that.
It literally means ‘idiot walking’ or ‘walking like an idiot’.
They made cars, and decided to tell us we were (and are) all idiots for doing basically the most human thing there is, walking around an environment, as we have been, for literal 10s of thousands of years.
- Gammelfisch@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
The USA needs the “Verkehrsberuhigter Bereich or Living Street” traffic rule for city center areas packed with restaurants, pubs, and stores. Better yet, close the street to motor vehicles.
- Xeno@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish5 hours
In my small town cars and pedestrians just kinda share the street. Like we take a look at each other and whoever seems to be the most in a hurry goes first. There’s very few traffic lights and crossings. Also very few cars and people, lol.
But back when I lived in a huge city, there was this big commercial street where traffic lights were literally ignored. A car would slowly threaten to run the pedestrians over until they stopped crossing, then the other cars would follow until enough pedestrians started threatening to get run over by the cars, then everyone would follow, and that was it, traffic was controlled by pedestrians’ willingness to die vs drivers’ willingness to kill them.
Worth mentioning that this only worked because that street was so crowded that at certain times of the year you could get an actual pedestrian jam, like the entire street filled with people, barely able to move, and more people constantly arriving.
Also, whenever police showed up, all the unlicensed street merchants would pack up their carts and run through the middle of the street so police wouldn’t steal their merch, cars were just expected to stop for them. Which was weird because the street was always full of regular cops, but there was this special type of cop whose only job was to steal merch from unlicensed merchants. The regular cops just ignored them.
I never understood why cars were allowed on that street, nor why drivers kept using it instead of taking a detour. Needless to say, moving away from that shithole of a city did wonders for my mental (and physical) health.
America is so inventive!!
You must have removed that stupid law a long time ago right.
Right?
(In France it’s always the motorists fault versus a pedestrian. ALWAYS.).
It hasn’t been removed, per se, but the definition has changed. It’s not necessarily jaywalking to cross outside of a crosswalk. If you look both ways and only cross when it’s safe, you’re fine. If you walked out directly into oncoming traffic, then you can get a ticket, even tho the law also states pedestrians always have the right of way and cars need to yield to them.
- 8 hours
Most jaywalking is fine, but there are instances in which it’s legit dangerous.
This is a law that’s only as good as how it’s enforced by the pigs.
One of the most surprising thing in old timey movies is that streets were truly mixed-use spaces, people walked there, rode horses, sold things from carts, etc. I guess that was possible because horses and horse-drawn carts were slower than cars, plus horses would generally try to avoid crashing into something, even without orders from their rider or driver.
I always thought that a “street” and a “road” were synonyms, until I heard the term “stroad” from Not Just Bikes. It turns out that in modern planning, a street is meant as a paved path intended to provide local access to homes, shops, and other things. A road is supposed to be a way to get from A to B. A “stroad” is a derogatory term to refer to a street that has been combined with a road, so you get high speed traffic that wants to travel through an area next to homes and businesses.
Stroads are the worst of both worlds because you end up with people who just want to get through an area dealing with kids playing, cars turning onto and off the path, other drivers slowing down to spot an address, etc. It also sucks for the locals because the way onto their driveway or school has to deal with large volumes of high-speed traffic.
IMO we’re not going back to horses and carts. High speed movement of people is here to stay. But, we really need to use modes of transport that separate people who are passing through on their way somewhere from people who are exercising, playing sports, shopping, hanging out outside their homes, etc.
The best way to do that is public transit, especially light rail and subways which pack a lot of people into a really efficient people-mover. Subways additionally move the people-mover underground to an area where there’s nobody who isn’t trying to travel. Light rails are easier to build, but they have to share the above-ground with people doing other things. But, at least when they’re on rails the only shared space is the rail, and the pedestrians know that as long as they’re not standing on rails they don’t have to worry about the light rail vehicles.
For North America, giving up cars might be too difficult, at least in the short term. But, it seems like in newly built neighbourhoods, the least they should do is make it so every second “street” is pedestrian / bicycle only. Or, maybe allow local vehicles but with an incredibly low speed limit, less than 10 km/h and a rule that they must yield to pedestrians at all times. That way someone can still pull into their driveway but they’ll only drive half a block on the local street to get there.
- tigermountain@lemmy.worldEnglish15 hours
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.
- monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish8 hours
The documentary Century of the Self is also educational if you want an overview of Bernays’ life and crimes against humanity. (Adam Curtis is such a good filmmaker.)
Also the word “accident.” A collision caused by negligence is not an accident.
- flandish@lemmy.worldEnglish17 hours
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!
- TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish16 hours
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.
- Carl@anarchist.nexusEnglish10 hours
“Jay” was a term for a country person who moved to the city. Like “hick” or “yokel”. They called it jaywalking because jays would visit the city and wander across the street without checking for traffic first. Because they weren’t used to the road being busy out in the country. So it became a fairly common thing for traffic to get held up because some yokel casually wandered across the street while looking at billboards and shop signs, instead of looking at the traffic. Thus, jaywalking.
- TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish14 minutes
According to wiki, The term jay-walking originated in the United States as a derivation of the phrase Jay-driver, referring to people who drove horse-drawn carriages and automobiles on the wrong side of the road. You are right about the “jay” part which is a derogatory term referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people.
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.
- 21 hours
Same here. Technically, jaywalking is illegal but the police does not enforce it.
- jol@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish21 hours
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.
- 21 hours
Here it’s always the driver at fault, pedestrians are zero-fault (even if it should be their fault)
In my country the law is that if there is a crosswalk within a certain distance, 25 meters if I recall, you have to use the crosswalk. Otherwise you are allowed to cross elsewhere after making sure the road is free.
(How do you know how long 25 meters is? Most trams in my city are 35 meters long, so if an entire tram platform is between the nearest crosswalk and you, it’s legal there.)
- BlackLaZoR@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
Thankfully I live in a country where jaywalking is both illegal and law is enforced. Thank God drivers don’t have to deal with the pedestrian BS.
I’m sorry that pedestrians existing hurts your fragile fee-fees. You don’t own the roads here, carbrain.
As the operator of a multi-ton hunk of steel travelling at high speeds, it is your responsibility to watch your surroundings and look for people crossing the road. If that upsets you so much, don’t drive.
- BlackLaZoR@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
My responsibility is to respect the traffic rules. Responsibility of pedestrians is also to respect the traffic rules. I don’t want some retard to walk straight under the car, die, and paralyze the traffic. Nobody wants this. Nobody likes jaywalkers. Not me, not police, not the insurance companies, not people who need to scrape the splatter from the street at the cost of taxpayer money.
Use the fucking crosswalk retard.
Nice job devolving into calling me a slur, that’ll show me for disagreeing with you! Not. Next time, be a better person, 'kay?
You seem unaware that accidents like that are lower in countries that don’t have jaywalking laws. It’s as simple as keeping speed limits in areas where people would do that low enough and also not have cars parked along every fucking street so both the drivers and pedestrians can see.
You’re clearly incredibly brainwashed in only being able to see how it works where you live, and you’re unable to see even the improvements that could be done there without rebuilding everything.
It’s real sad seeing that level of ignorance and idiocy without any self reflection.- BlackLaZoR@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
You seem unaware that accidents like that are lower in countries that don’t have jaywalking laws.
Source or it didn’t happen.
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…
- Crankenstein@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
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.
- Crankenstein@lemmy.worldEnglish14 hours
“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.
Oh wow, first time seeing this on Lemmy! Been seeing this exact post on Reddit for over a decade though.
- 16 hours
Did you know Snoop Dogg sold weed to Cameron Diaz in high school or Steve Buscemi was a volunteer firefighter on 9/11
- lobut@lemmy.caEnglish15 hours
Let me tell you something about LOTR and Vigga Mortensen and the kicking of a helmet …
- TIEPilot@lemmy.worldEnglish22 hours
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
