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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.
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.
Oh wow, first time seeing this on Lemmy! Been seeing this exact post on Reddit for over a decade though.
Did you know Snoop Dogg sold weed to Cameron Diaz in high school or Steve Buscemi was a volunteer firefighter on 9/11
Let me tell you something about LOTR and Vigga Mortensen and the kicking of a helmet ....
Also the word “accident.” A collision caused by negligence is not an accident.
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!
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.
Same here. Technically, jaywalking is illegal but the police does not enforce it.
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.
Here it's always the driver at fault, pedestrians are zero-fault (even if it should be their fault)
As it should be imo.
Well yeah, it's obvious it should be
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
just capitalists doing capitalism. :(
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...
That kind of authority fundamentally should not exist within a just society.
Good Climate Town episode where he mentions this and more car related shenanigans: https://youtu.be/oOttvpjJvAo
(I think it's the right video)
Oddly most other countries have laws which protect people not industry.
Citation needed. I'm not 100% sure about written law, but in Germany we learn to look before crossing the street and using a traffic light if one is near.
"Carbon footprint"
Ive been told that given the language of the time, it roughly translated to "jackass-walking"
According to ethymonline:
by 1912, American English (said in original citation to be a Kansas City term), from jay, perhaps with notion of boldness and impudence. Related: Jaywalk; jaywalker.
The real question is : who is Jay?
Jay was a deregatory term for country immigrant to the city. Like "yokel".
You need to go farther back than that. The term jaywalking seems to have originated in Kansas City, MO. I have a feeling they were still just a little salty the Jayhawkers won.
That's not fun, I wanted it to be like it was actually Jay Smith who walked across a street in Boston and the cars stopped, resulting in a massive traffic jam, as a result they passed this law.
Yokelwalking would be so much better
See also: identity theft.
I couldn't find anything suggesting that?!
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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