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Short Stuff: Jaywalking · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and Jerry's even here. Dave's not no, and
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: even knows where Dave is right now. But Jerry's here
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and that's good. And this is short stuff about jaywalking.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: J Yeah, I think I want to start this out
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: by saying that our mutual friend who shot stuff you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: know TV shows the DP, Scott Ippolito, when we lived
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: in l A together, he got a j walking ticket
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: one day. Man, that is so Scott. And I was like,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: what they do that? And he said they do that.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I could see Scott's face when he actually got a ticket,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and it was sinking in that he was getting a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: ticket for jaywalking. It. It's great, great stuff, man. And
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I think it wasn't even like crossing against the crosswalk sign.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I think he literally just crossed the street where he
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have that. Cops like, I don't like I don't
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: like your face. Yeah, he's got a great face too.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Supposedly That's the thing too that we'll we'll talk about later,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that jaywalking is not um equitably doled out among the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: different different types of people in the United States, which
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: is sucky, but at the same time, Chuck Um, we
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: should probably start at the beginning of jaywalking because jaywalking
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: hasn't always been around, because cars haven't always been around,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and jaywalking doesn't really exist without the context of cars.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Because thanks to a really interesting Vox article that we found, um,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it turns out the automobile industry is behind the creation
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and criminalization of the concept of jaywalking. Before it was
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: just here's the street, ere a pedestrian, which means you
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: basically on the street, go ahead and cross wherever you want. Yeah.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So shout out to Box and our old pals from
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com for this stuff. What I
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't derive from the Vox article, Well, let's just go
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: ahead and say this. The term jay back then was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a name if you were like a rube or a
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: nudge or a hick. You be called a j A
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: lot of times. It was a name for somebody like that.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: It was very derogatory. You also wanted jay, I like that,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: but people were called ja drivers or they were known
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: as jay driving. But it seemed like Vox had it
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the other way around, and that jay driving came about
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: after the term jaywalking, and I couldn't figure out which
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it was. I couldn't either, but they were so very
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: close that they were um pretty much created almost at
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the same time, but they were both born. It seems
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: like out of this conflict between automotive drivers car drivers
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: we might call them today, and pedestrians, people who are
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: just walking around because, like I was saying before, the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: street belonged to everybody and they were like corse drawn
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: carriages and all that stuff. But for the most part,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: people were on foot and the first people who were
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: driving cars were super rich um uh gad flies basically
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: like f Scott Fitzgerald types. We're the ones who were
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: driving automotives at the at first. And so there was
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: certainly class resentment out of the out of the gate,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: but there was also more than anything, resentment for people
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: who were just zipping through, um the streets that were
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: crowded with people, including children playing in the street, because
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that was a normal thing to do um. And so
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: there was a tension almost out of the gate between
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: drivers and pedestrians. Yeah. I mean the drivers essentially, we're like,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: get off the road, and the walkers were like, wait
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a minute, the roads belonged to us, and they said no,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that's why we started building sidewalks and the walkers were like,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what you want us to walk over there on that
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: little four foot span When we lived our whole life
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: in the streets, there's cracks there that I can't step on.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: The term ja driving I think it may have been
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: first though, because this was like the nineteen twenties when
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the automobile really started to come on the scene and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: started like making a legit claim to the streets. Uh.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And it looks like jay driving was in an actual
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: newspaper in nineteen o five and the Kansas Junction City
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Union and the Kansas City Star talked about jay driving,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So I think that may have been first. And this
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: was driving on the wrong side of the road. And
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: then initially jay walking met just being rude on the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: sidewalk and like not I don't know if it was
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: right or left base, but basically walking in a way
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: that wasn't appropriate on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's the house
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: stuff works spiel. If you read that Vox article, it's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: basically saying that, um, jay walkers were called that for
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: getting in the way of cars. It was derogatory term
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for people who didn't know better stay out of these
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: new awesome um cars way, and then in response people
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: called jay like people driving cars jay drivers because they
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: didn't they it was just a retaliatory term from what
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I could tell. So this shall be known henceforth as
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the Great House Stuff Works Fox. Yeah, exactly between Jay
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and jay vox. But the long and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the short of it is that once this started to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: be a thing, the automobile industry got involved, and their
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: lobby and their money got involved, and they got together
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: with local police forces and they started initially like a
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: shame campaign. Yeah, didn't they to like shame people that
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: were jaywalking. Yeah. There's apparently the National Automobile Chamber of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Commerce who had the bright idea of creating a free
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: wire service for local journalists where the journalist would send
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: in the details of like a of a of a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: like a car accidentally a pedestrian hit by a car,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and the the um wire service would send them back
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a full article. Go ahead and run it. You can
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: put your name on it if you want, but it
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: would put the onus on the pedestrians. It would talk
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: about how the pedestrian was a dummy for not getting
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: out of the way of the car. It was the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: pedestrians fall and they were like, that was the level
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of like underhandedness that this campaign was taking. Yeah, And
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: as far as the shame campaign, it was literally on
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the streets, like they would advise police officers to shout
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: them down, to blow their whistles at them, and like
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: call attention to them. There were like legit, you know,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties fifties style propaganda posters about jaywalking that they
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: would put up, and all of a sudden, the pedestrian
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: was was, you know, persona non grata in the United States. Yeah,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and then in very short order they started making crosswalks,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and then in very short order after that, there were
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: laws that were past that said this is where the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: only place you can cross the street and be within
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the letter of the law. And as a result, cars
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: came to dominate streets for the first time ever pretty
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: quickly after they were invented and introduced. And I say
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: we take a break and then talk about those laws
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that kind of came up as a result of that
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: automotive industry lobbying. Let's do it. Well, now we're on
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: thing or two from Josh can Chuck stuff you should know,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: all right, all right, So back in Herbert Hoover apparently,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: who was the Commerce secretary at the time before he
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: was president, he wrote up a uniform law that that
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: guided pedestrian um behavior in the hopes that everybody would
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: just adopt this law and it would make sense. But
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: instead a patchwork of not just state laws but municipal
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: laws arose. So depending on where you are in the country,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the law is going to be radically different from somewhere
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: else in the country about whether you're in the writer
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: or the long for getting hit by that car. Yeah,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I mean that's still this thing today, Like it depends
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: on what city you're in, and this is you know,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: like you said, even sometimes small towns and municipalities, I'll
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: do it up to big cities there are like in
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: New York, it's people jaywalk. That's the only way you
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: can get anywhere in New York is if you just
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: kind of do your own thing. And I've never seen
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: anyone get busted for it. It seems like that it's
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: acceptable to do there. Um. In Los Angeles, it's weird,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: like people will will stop and if there's no cars coming,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they will sit there. They will stand there and wait
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: at a crosswalk crosswalk until it turns. Um. It's much
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: less pedestrian friendly than New York is, obviously, But depending
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: on where you are, it's either a faux pot to
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: do it or it's downright illegal. Uh. If you're talking
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: right of way, it's anybody's guests sometimes who technically legally
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: has the right of way. Uh. There's an old saying
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that the right of way is something you give, not take.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Especially when you're in a car and someone's walking. I
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: think you should always sort of be nice and defer
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to the person walking right, don't you think? Yeah, of course,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I mean. And the overall the overall points of this
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: is that if you're driving a car, you're not really
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in any sort of danger of being harmed yourself if
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you get in an accident with the pedestrian. But a
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: pedestrian is in a lot of danger for getting hit
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: by a car. And so you, as the operator of
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the car, have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And then conversely, you as a pedestrian, just for out
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of a sense of self preservation, have a responsibility not
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: just walk in front of cars and presume they're going
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to stop. Yeah, because here's a stat three percent of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: traffic incidents involved pedestrians, but fourteen percent of traffic deaths
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: are pedestrians, and I think seventy of those fatalities are
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: outside of intersections, just people crossing the street or whatever
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: wherever they want. Yeah, so that the National Highway Transportation
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Safety Administration put together a publication called Pedestrians Safety Enforcement
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Operations and You Colan and how to Guide. I added
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the and you part, okay, and um. They basically it's
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: instructs cops to just go ahead and cite um, everybody,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: cite the driver and the pedestrian if there's any kind
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of accident. But they recommend um really bringing the hammer
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: down on drivers because they're the ones who who are
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: going to cause the most damage. So they really need
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to be taught to be on the lookout for pedestrians,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: even if the car has the right of way. The
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: This House Stuff Works article makes a really great point, Um,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: regardless of any local laws of who's right or who's wrong,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: if you're a driver and you hit a pedestrian, it
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether you're in the right or wrong. You
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: just hit somebody and maybe seriously injured or maybe even
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: killed them, and that's a life changing event. So forget
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: the laws. Just look out for pedestrians at all times.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe if you actually do hit somebody, you can look
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: into local laws to see what the deal is or
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: have your lawyer do it. But up to that point,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you should be looking out for pedestrians. And if you're
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a pedestrians, you should never, ever, in a million years,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: ever be looking at your cell phone when you stop
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: off of a curb and cross the street. It is
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: one of the dumbest, most easily avoidable things that you
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: can do, and yet it happens everywhere. Yeah there, I
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: mean there are towns that have and cities have I
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: think distracted pedestrian laws on the books for stuff just
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: like that, right, Yeah, And I also want to put
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: in two cents for um enforcing distracted driver's laws. Like
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: just seeing people driving around looking at their phone is
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it makes me crazy. It makes my my blood boil,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Like if blood could boil, I would say it literally
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: makes my blood boil. Speeding down the highway just staring
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: into their lap, Oh my god, unbelievable. Yeah, or like
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: they'll drop down all of a sudden from eighty to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: like sixty because they're checking their phone now and they're
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: not really paying attention. But yeah, no matter how you're
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: doing it, it's it's just wrong, wrong, wrong, You're wrong,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You're wrong. Yeah. I used to give a nice little
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: friendly tap at someone in front of me at a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: red light, head and gone yet on the horn, the horn.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I say, you know, I'm not the bumper. But now
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: when I see the head down and there on the phone,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I just I lay on it. I don't care. Yeah,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. Uh. I got one more quick story,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: if I may to illustrate yielding to pedestrians. It was
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Christmas Eve this year and I was coming down McClendon
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: through the neighborhoods of Atlanta toward Candler Park, and there's
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: kind of a funky pedestrian crossing there that's a little
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: it's not very intuitive, and there was a legit elderly couple,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: like maybe in their eighties, even sort of like should
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I go? Should I not? And they shouldn't have, but
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I could tell that they were confused, so I stopped
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and they started to go, and a guy coming from
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the other direction laid on his horn and was like
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: screaming and pointing up at the sign saying they shouldn't
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: be walking. As he went by on Christmas Eve, this
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: elderly couple, and he was like, it didn't look like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: some young jerk, he was like some middle aged guy.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I think he had a normal middle aged passenger. Like
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: you look out for them, Yeah, they're the worst. Actually, yeah,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: those are the ones you have to look out for
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the most. Oh, it just made me so mad. I
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe that this guy just blew through there, Like
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: what it would have cost him to just let this
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: whole couple pass. I know, and you see that so much.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Everybody's so keyed up these days, but it seems like
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: middle are the most keyed up of all its stuff.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a time to be keyed up, which
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: also means it's a time to be kinder than ever.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, that's good advice. Ch alrighty, I'm done
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: half the soapbox. I've got one more thing. Apparently there
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: was a two twelve study um that looked at how
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: jaywalking is enforced among races, and depending on the town
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you're in, Uh, you're much likelier to be cited for
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: jaywalking if you're a person or color of color Champagne
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: or Band of Illinois is the one that's usually trotted
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: out as a UM as the the shameful UM poster
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: child for this. But the people back in two thousand
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: twelve who were cited for jaywalking we're black, despite only
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: twelve point four percent of the population of Champagne or Band,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Illinois being black. And it's not just them. There's like
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: this happens in towns all over the country. But it's um.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: It's like bad enough to get a ticket for jaywalking,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: but if if it's not being doled out evenly, then
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that is even worse. You know, agreed, be careful out there,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: be nice to people. That's all I got. I think
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that's good. Well, then, uh, that means everybody's short stuff
• 14:39
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• 14:44
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