Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

How quickly we forget history. Horses were also lethal. Look at the number of people killed by horses, either being thrown from them, trampled by them, or run over by carts pulled by horses. Streets were not some utopic garden of pedestrian safety prior to cars. There were no jaywalking rules because society had evolved over thousands of years being rather acceptive of horse-related dangers. When the new device came around, no matter its relative danger, then new regulations were needed. There were once almost zero regs regarding candles, objects that killed thousands almost daily by fire. But soon after electricity came along then we suddenly needed rules to manage the new "dangerous" thing despite its use preventing untold thousands of deaths.

And thank goodness someone did. Although, my boss getting ticketed for walking across an empty downtown LA street just shows it's still ripe for abuse. And the most ironic part was the cop running his car up onto the sidewalk to jump out and write the ticket.

Actually, it wasn’t new technology — the 20th century saw a massive shift in expectations around health and safety and it reverberated through every part of life, regardless of whether new technology was involved.

It had more to do with secular humanism almost fully supplanting diverse traditional value systems at the government level, and with capitalism’s insatiable hunger for living bodies that can produce and consume widgets.

PSA:

On January 1, 2023, jaywalking became legal in California with the Freedom to Walk Act, reversing what was once one of the strictest laws against this practice in the country. Now, pedestrians can cross the road at places other than intersections and crosswalks without penalty.

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles.

It's obvious major regulation was needed, and not just for pedestrians. Pretend cars didn't exist on that street for a moment and think about the changes needed to make it safe: carts needed lanes and rules for changing lanes, cable cars needed dedicated lanes, intersections needed a system to allow traffic from multiple directions, and pedestrians were being a bit too free with their judgement calls.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uINgSqEU26A