Jaywalking

Jaywalking is the act of pedestrians walking in or crossing a roadway if that act contravenes traffic regulations. The term jay-walker originated in the United States as a derivation of the phrase jay-driver (the word jay meaning a greenhorn, or rube), referring to people who drove horse-drawn carriages and automobiles on the wrong side of the road.

The arrival of the automobile in the opening decades of the 20th century led to increasingly deadly conflicts in the street, and the public was generally unsympathetic to motorists or to early legislative attempts to control pedestrian behavior. In response, the US automobile industry and associated organizations undertook public campaigns to identify pedestrians, often impugned as jay-walkers, as a problem to be managed in the new automotive age. The first widely successful criminalization of jaywalking was enacted by the Los Angeles city council in 1925, using legislation drafted by the auto lobby that inspired similar ordinances in other American cities.

Jaywalking laws vary widely by jurisdiction. In many countries, the word is not generally used and, with the exception of certain high-speed roads such as motorways, there are no laws limiting how pedestrians are allowed to cross public highways. Thus, globally speaking, legal texts use different concepts, one of which is Rules applicable to pedestrians, put forward by the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. As an example of the subtleties and discrepancies of the laws governing pedestrian road traffic, even as a signing member of the Vienna convention, the United Kingdom does not have jaywalking laws: its Highway Code relies on the pedestrians making their own judgment on whether it is safe to cross based on the Green Cross Code.