Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here,
Speaker 1: you're in a rush and don't want to head all
Speaker 1: the way to the crosswalk to cross the street anyway?
Speaker 1: Who cares? Right? The store you need is directly across
Speaker 1: the street, not anywhere near the intersection, so you go
Speaker 1: ahead and cross when traffic is clear. What you've just
Speaker 1: done is jaywalked across to the street at somewhere other
Speaker 1: than an intersection or crosswalk, And it's probably illegal. But why?
Speaker 1: Mostly this has to do with pedestrian safety in general,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense considering that data from the National
Speaker 1: Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, shows a total of
Speaker 1: over six thousand pedestrian deaths in twenty nineteen alone. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: while pedestrians represent only three percent of those involved in
Speaker 1: traffic accidents, they account for fourteen teen percent of traffic deaths,
Speaker 1: and about seventy percent of pedestrian fatalities are from accidents
Speaker 1: outside of intersections. So, yes, jaywalking is illegal for safety reasons,
Speaker 1: got it. But jaywalking's history and the enforcement of it
Speaker 1: is more complicated than one might expect. The term jaywalking
Speaker 1: is derived from an older and now more obscure term
Speaker 1: jay driving. Jay driving was used to describe drivers of
Speaker 1: horse drawn carriages who stubbornly drove on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of the road. Some of the earliest known uses of
Speaker 1: both jaywalking and jay driving come from newspapers in Kansas
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh five. In both cases, the word jay
Speaker 1: was a derogatory term for someone who was inexperienced at
Speaker 1: what they were doing. However, the earliest uses of jaywalking
Speaker 1: described poor sidewalk manners rather than illegally crossing the street.
Speaker 1: It's unclear exactly why the meaning of the time of all.
Speaker 1: One might assume that when the automobile appeared, the car
Speaker 1: also became a status symbol, and therefore that there was
Speaker 1: class tension among those who could afford to drive and
Speaker 1: those who were stuck walking, But in fact the opposite
Speaker 1: is true. Drivers were the social outsiders, outnumbered by pedestrians
Speaker 1: who resented being displaced to sidewalks. This social phase lasted
Speaker 1: well into the nineteen twenties, when the automobile industry lobbied
Speaker 1: to make cities more car friendly and to make jaywalking
Speaker 1: first a faux pas and then eventually a crime. A
Speaker 1: crosswalks were added to streets in nineteen eleven, and laws
Speaker 1: against jaywalking were widespread by the nineteen thirties. These days,
Speaker 1: if your hit while jaywalking, your rights as a pedestrian
Speaker 1: vary from state to state. Most states view the situation differently,
Speaker 1: depending on whether the pedestrian was in a controlled crossing
Speaker 1: with a crosswalk or an uncontrolled crossing with no markings
Speaker 1: or signals of Further complicating matters, traffic signals don't always
Speaker 1: have the same meaning in every state, and some states
Speaker 1: have distracted walking laws that let law enforcement issue citations
Speaker 1: for offences such as texting while crossing an intersection. Then
Speaker 1: there are states like Michigan that have no state wide
Speaker 1: crosswalk laws, leaving it up to cities and towns to
Speaker 1: write and communicate their own regulations. So when you're behind
Speaker 1: the wheel, how do you keep up with all those laws?
Speaker 1: Consider that old rule of thumb that you might have
Speaker 1: learned way back in driver's education. The right of way
Speaker 1: is something you give, not take a Laws for drivers
Speaker 1: again vary from state to state, but in general, drivers
Speaker 1: must yield the right of way to pedestrians in crosswalks
Speaker 1: and at intersections that have stop signs or traffic signals.
Speaker 1: But pedestrians are also expected to yield the right of
Speaker 1: way to drivers whenever there's no established place for them
Speaker 1: to cross still. In nineteen states, drivers are supposed to
Speaker 1: yield to a pedestrian when they're anywhere in the roadway,
Speaker 1: and in even more states, drivers are supposed to yield
Speaker 1: to pedestrians whenever the pedestrian is in whatever specific proximity
Speaker 1: to the driver's vehicle. The NHTSA has a guide for
Speaker 1: Pedestrian Safety Enforcement for law enforcement officers. It advises those
Speaker 1: officers to quote site both drivers and pedestrians, but focus
Speaker 1: on drivers as they are the less vulnerable population. In
Speaker 1: other words, pedestrians and drivers often share responsibility for collisions,
Speaker 1: but drivers should remember that they are much less likely
Speaker 1: to suffer bodily harm. But okay, you've probably heard the
Speaker 1: pedestrians always have the right of way even if they
Speaker 1: are jaywalking. Is that not true? Surprise? There are a
Speaker 1: couple of ways to answer this question. First, it depends
Speaker 1: again on local laws. A second, it depends on what
Speaker 1: the driver's car insurance policy says under those local laws.
Speaker 1: And third, and most importantly, if you're driving and you
Speaker 1: hit a pedestrian and they get injured, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter who was right. The NHTSA's guidelines emphasize the pedestrians
Speaker 1: are still responsible for their own safety. However, it's also
Speaker 1: the obligation of motorists to be on the lookout for
Speaker 1: pedestrians everywhere and at all times. But what about those jaywalkers?
Speaker 1: Are they likely to be penalized for the practice in general?
Speaker 1: The answer is probably no. However, according to various investigations,
Speaker 1: current enforcement against jaywalking disproportionately targets people of color. For example,
Speaker 1: following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, a Department of Justice investigation found that
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of people cited for jaywalking in that
Speaker 1: district were black, even though only about seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of the total population was black at the time. Even
Speaker 1: in the mostly white collar town of Champagne or Banno, Illinois,
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of people cited for jaywalking. We're black.
Speaker 1: And even when jaywalking enforcement isn't overtly racist, it may
Speaker 1: target pedestrians in misleading or unfair ways as a means
Speaker 1: of revenue generation rather than safety. Improvement. So in short, yes,
Speaker 1: jaywalking is illegal in most jurisdictions, but it falls on
Speaker 1: both drivers and pedestrians to be aware of local laws.
Speaker 1: Though even then common sense and a priority on safety
Speaker 1: should prevail. Pay attention out there. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article is jaywalking still a crime? On how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com? Written by Shri's three wid brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production by heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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