• sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
    21·
    2 months ago

    The concept of criminalizing jaywalking might seem like an intuitive one, one that was designed with the safety of the pedestrian in mind. But in fact, the exact opposite is true. Jaywalking was invented by the auto industry as a way of shifting the blame for traffic crimes off automobile drivers and onto pedestrians, rather than out of an actual desire to decrease the number of pedestrian deaths due to automobiles.

    From: https://www.grunge.com/721704/the-truth-about-how-jaywalking-became-a-crime/

    • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      2 months ago

      No, they were around long before that, but they were often hand built, one at a time without an assembly line. France and England had many major auto races going annually by the first decade of the 20th century. Standardization was just starting to take hold. WWI kicked off with trucks and auto ambulances.

      • Rolando@lemmy.worldOP
        4·
        2 months ago

        Yeah there’s a famous story from WWI about taxis:

        On the night of 7–8 September [1914] came the most storied event of the Battle of the Marne. Military Governor Gallieni in Paris reinforced the 6th army guarding Paris by shuttling soldiers to the front by rail, truck, and Renault taxis. Gallieni commandeered about six hundred taxicabs at Les Invalides in central Paris to carry soldiers to the front at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, fifty kilometres away. Most of the taxis were demobilised on 8 September but some remained longer to carry the wounded and refugees. The taxis, following city regulations, dutifully ran their meters. The French treasury reimbursed the total fare of 70,012 francs.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne