I just learned something interesting from M-W’s Word History post Why Jaywalking is Called Jaywalking:
The meaning of jaywalker is different than it was when it first began to be used. The word was formed in imitation of a slightly older word, the jay-driver. This initially referred to a driver of horse-drawn carriages or automobiles who refused to abide by the traffic laws in a fairly specific way: they drove on the wrong side of the road.
An article in The Junction City Union (Junction City, Kansas) on June 28th, 1905 begins “Nearly every day someone calls our attention to articles that have been appearing in The Kansas City Star concerning ‘The Jay Driver’”, and then goes on to warn against these miscreants who cannot seem to figure out that they should be driving on the right side of the road.
Stop at the corner of any well traveled street in the business part of the city and see how many know how to drive—that is to keep to the right hand side of the street—and you will be astonished at the number who don’t know that this is the right way to do or who are careless in regard to the matter.
In October of that same year in The Kansas City Star, we find mention of the pedestrian version of these drivers:
Much annoyance would be obviated if people when meeting others going in the opposite direction would keep to the right and avoid collisions and being called a ‘jay walker.’
For the first few years that it was in use jaywalker had little, if anything, to do with pedestrians crossing the street, and was used solely to scold those who lacked sidewalk etiquette.
Both jaywalker and jay-driver are taken from a sense of the word jay, meaning ‘a greenhorn, or rube’. It is unclear why jaywalker shifted its meaning and survived for more than a hundred years now, while jay-driver languishes in obscurity. And if you are one of those who find the conduct of the jaywalker objectionable beyond words, take heart, for the sentiments of early 20th century America are in line with yours; in the words of The Chanute Daily Tribune in 1909: “The jay walker needs attention as well as the jay driver, and is about as big a nuisance.”
The OED (entry not updated since 1933) will presumably catch up to this derivation when they get around to revising the jaywalker entry, which currently says simply “Etymology: < jay n. 3d + walker n.¹.”
I am definitely not “one of those who find the conduct of the jaywalker objectionable beyond words”; as a proud New Yorker, even if I no longer live in the city, I think of jaywalking as a noble tradition, and am delighted to learn that California has eased up on its former notoriously intolerant laws. (I am, on the other hand, depressed to see the sloppy copyediting in the M-W post: the stray “The” in “The Junction City Union” and “The Kansas City Star,” no italics in “The Kansas City Star,” and only one properly italicized usage in “The Chanute Daily Tribune” — though my personal preference would be to ignore “The” in the names and just say, e.g., “the Kansas City Star.”)
In unrelated news, New giant bookstore in east Japan hopes to offer ‘treasure hunt’ with 500,000 volumes — holy cow!
I find the word jaywalker objectionable beyond words. It’s called walking.
Do you also find the words oak, maple, and birch objectionable, since they’re all trees?
I take Frans to mean that jaywalker implies that city streets belong to cars and their drivers, which is indeed an objectionable idea. (“I object!” “You object? On what grounds?” “I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”)
Ah, in that case I agree! The utterance was a tad too gnomic for me.
I know the German Geisterfahrer for jaydriver. I see the German wikipedia article is at the sober Falschfahrer, and the English is at Wrong-way driving. There are separate wikidata items for counterflow driving and counterflow driver, with the former being an “occupation” of the latter.
There’s not much a concept of jaywalking here, but I do object to people who refuse to think when they’re walking, and stop in a group right opposite a sign which is already blocking half the pavement, or make people coming the other way step into the gutter to get past, or whatever.
Several of the earliest quotations for “jaywalker” were collected by Barry Popik at his page on Jaywalker, Jaywalking, and indeed it was first applied to pedestrians getting in others’ way on *sidewalks*, only later generalized to pedestrians in streets. And Douglas Wilson unearthed a “jay rider” in 1891 Illinois, apparently referring to a cyclist who caused a collision in a bicycle race.
Merriam-Webster was trying to sum up the story in a small space, but they left out the key point when “jaywalking” went national: the first anti-jaywalking ordinance was passed in Kansas City in 1912, using that term, and it was national news. Peter Reitan has the full details at ESNPC: Jaywalkers, Jayhawkers, Jay-Towns and Jays, setting out the social context:
and following with a sampling of the national press in 1912 and a thorough survey of the older “jay driver”, summarizing:
Is it just a coincidence that jay-driver and jay-walker originated in Kansas, while the University of Kansas teams are the Jayhawks? In other words, is the sense of jay the led to jay-walker etc. a regional term that also contributed to jawhawk?
The word jay-hawk that is preserved in the UK mascot name originally meant (in the form “jay-hawker;” per the OED):
The earlier OED cite is an 1860 report from Mound City, Kansas, printed in an Ohio newspaper:
but I would guess that the name probably goes back at least a few years further, to the height of “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856.
The OED gives no direct etymology, although it quotes The [New York] World as explaining that term began as “Gay Yorker,” referring to “Doc” Jennison’s men. However, the quote is from 1862, and without further context, it’s not clear whether it means Jennison’s men in the 1850s, or during his service as a colonel in the Union Army. Wikipedia offers up a fanciful etymology connecting the name to John Jay. The official UK line on the name’s origin was apparently first laid out by the dean of the graduate school there in 1926:
The university’s official view is still that the jay morpheme refers to a bird—but they have an unfortunate vested interest in that position, because their long-established mascot is explicitly a passerine-raptor chimera.
If the jay in jay-hawker was actually related to the one in later jay-driver, it could be through the progression of meanings greenhorn > outsider > outside agitator; but that’s just guess on my part.
Somewhat garden-pathed by “UK” before the penny dropped …
I could have sworn I learned about the history of jaywalking from LH (and how jaywalking as a concept was subject to intense propaganda campaigns by the nascent auto industry to shift blame away from motorists as cars became responsible for more and more deaths), but apparently LH is just the default source that I assume interesting things from the internet originate from.
Peter D. Norton appears to be the leading jaywalking researcher (and most Google results about the subject seem to cite his book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City).
There’s a good series of photos on Flickr with examples of anti-jaywalking propaganda from the early 20th century.
Somewhat garden-pathed by “UK” before the penny dropped …
Same here!
@languagehat
The “beyond words” was of course mimicked mockingly on the basis of Merriam-Webster, but the sentiment is as John Cowan said. I think the concept of “jaywalking” is a pretty silly idea at best, and one that I’m not sure really exists on this side of the Atlantic.
It’s something one encounters in America. When you try to cross at a traffic light, there’s a sign that tells you to let cars turn right first. If you unsuspectingly do so the first time, the light is red already by the time they’re done turning! Cross first and they seem to be angry at you. So you figure out the best way to cross the street in America is to “jaywalk” and then people seem to think you’re committing some kind of crime for just crossing a street without going half a kilometer out of your way?! There’s certainly something very messed up about the whole thing, perhaps a failure of infrastructure design first and foremost, but the (legal?) concept of “jaywalking” that shouldn’t even exist remains hanging in the air as well.
Edit: incidentally, the Not Just Bikes channel over on YouTube covers this kind of thing very well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ByEBjf9ktY
“It is unclear why jaywalker shifted its meaning and survived for more than a hundred years now, while jay-driver languishes in obscurity”
It’s not unclear at all – it’s because car manufacturers launched an aggressive (and unfortunately, effective) campaign in the 1920s to seize exclusive control of common spaces such as city streets .
In principle, the idea is that pedestrians should not cross busy streets with fast moving cars, making it harder for cars to avoid hitting them. That’s why crosswalks exist. But as often happens, laws take a life of their own and become moral principles, even where their original justification no longer exists. That depends on local traditions. In the US, based on statistics and my experience, it’s hard to get a ticket for jaywalking in New York and San Francisco, impossible to get one in Chicago, and easy to get one in Los Angeles.
Regarding book stores, I believe the largest in Japan is still the Maruzen in Umeda (Osaka), with approximately 2 million volumes.
The last time I was in Germany — Munich, to be specific, and many years ago — I was taken aback to see crowds of pedestrians standing at the side of a perfectly empty street, waiting for the little green man to light up before they crossed. I don’t know if a jaywalker would get a ticket, but he or she would be Severely Frowned Upon, I imagine.
This piece notes that the first anti-jaywalking ordinance was enacted in Kansas City, Mo. and suggests that there may have been some wordplay connection to the rhyming “jayhawker,” which 50 years previously had referred to pro-Union/anti-slavery irregular gunmen during the oft-irregular conflict that occurred around the Kansas/Missouri border in the Civil War era. But the etymology of jayhawker seems shrouded in mystery, with a variety of not-very-convincing theories extant. (The clipping to “Jayhawk” as the mascot of the University of Kansas seems to have been accompanied by a sanitized and bogus etymology that elides the “jayhawker” predecessor stage.) https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/11/jaywalkers-and-jayhawkers-pedestrian.html
That’s the ESNPC page that I linked above, and no, I don’t believe the similarity to “jayhawker” is anything more than a coincidence. It quotes a couple of papers in 1912 that brightly remarked “Oh, I know! It must be a pun on jayhawker!” — but the thing is, they were *distant* papers. The Kansas City paper never made any such connection. If that had actually been in locals’ minds, it’s hard to believe they would or could have kept it a secret never to be recorded in writing for over a hundred years.
“Jay” was well-known slang throughout the US at the time for rube, hick, bumpkin, clueless and unsophisticated; “jay driver” was known at least regionally; and early uses of “jay walker” almost always parallel it to “jay driver”. I think that’s sufficient to explain it, no need for anything else.
In the US, based on statistics and my experience, it’s hard to get a ticket for jaywalking in New York
A few years back, some young women were not merely ticketed but actually arrested for jaywalking — while lying in their hospital beds as a result of their car-induced injuries. The resulting city-wide outrage forced the charges to be dropped. This was on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, I believe, where cars do indeed move fast. It’s quite another matter here on 3rd St, where there are only 1.5 traffic lanes, a speed limit of 25 mph (40 km/hr), and traffic is one way, which means it is actually safer to cross in the middle of the block where you can reliably see cars coming than at the corner where you may not be able to.
@John Cowan: There are many traffic infractions for which it is essentially impossible to get a ticket—unless the infraction leads to an accident. Jaywalking may not quite be in that category (at least in some jurisdictions), but a pedestrian precipitating an accident by forcing a car to swerve to avoid them is exactly the situation in which I would expect to see a jaywalking ticket issued (at least if the pedestrian sticks around the scene of the accident). However, it makes sense that there would be more sympathy for the offenders if the accident involved them being struck themselves, as in the example you mention.
Separately: I remember now that when I learned the word jaywalking when I was about four years old, I imagined that the name had something to do with the shape of the letter J. I wasn’t sure exactly what the connection was, however. I thought that maybe the J represented somebody walking along the side of the street and then hooking across at an inappropriate position, but I wasn’t convinced that really justified the name.
Brett: Depends where. In Los Angeles it used to be (I don’t know how it is now) that you would certainly get a ticket crossing in the middle of the block of an empty street, if a cop happened to see you. I myself got a ticket there for crossing (safely) at a crosswalk against a red light.
I’ve never heard of anything like this in the UK (the real one, not the University of Kansas.) Rule Britannia!
My impression as a pedestrian in Paris has always been that if you survive, it’s legal.
And as Beat Takeshi has told us (in verse): 赤信号皆で渡れば怖くない。
Rise up, Americans!
@David E.: The University of Kansas is KU. UK, by contrast, is the University of Kentucky. Don’t ask me why; I didn’t do it.
And in between the two is Washington University, which is not in either Washington.
Thank you, JWB, Y.
Ah Ken nU.
“Jaywalking” and “ethnic” are two words commonly used in certain parts of US society whose meaning I was ignorant of until a few months ago, despite having encountered them all my life — as I have never visited the US itself. I remember a friendly-looking guy with a MAGA hat in a Sofia bar using them. /s
“We have information from Southern Kansas of a highly satisfactory character. Peace is restored, and the settlers who were driven from their claims are returning unmolested. The ‘Jayhawkers’ are down and still falling,….”
Wyandot[t]e City, KS Western Argus 2/2
Sept. 2, 1858
“Troubles in Kansas–‘Jayhawkers versus Anti-Jayhawkers’
St. Louis, Jan. 5–A dispatch from Kansas City says that a gang of Jayhawkers under Capt. Brown entered Bates County, Missouri, on Thursday last, and stole four horses…
….The whole country is divided into Jayhawkers and anti-Jayhawkers. The former commit all sorts of crimes, and are openly upheld by some Methodist preachers and many respectable people. The Jayhawkers justify their acts as proper revenge for the same kind of deprivations committed upon them by the pro-slavery party when they were in the majority….”
Boston Courier, Jan. 6, 1859 3/4
It does rather annoy me when a pedestrian casually crosses the road in front of me without even looking round to check that I’m slowing down, still less acknowledging my having done so! (UK)
It’s something one encounters in America. When you try to cross at a traffic light, there’s a sign that tells you to let cars turn right first
I have never seen a sign like that in America. Is that a California thing? Of course as an American and therefore an instinctual Jaywalker I probably would have just ignored a sign like that even if I had seen it.
In Germany and Austria unthinking obediance to the Ampel seems to be on the decline. Whether this is directly correlated to a general decline in civic engagement and moral standards or just coincidence I cannot say. May just be another sign of the creeping Americanization of Central Europe.
I haven’t seen it in California or anywhere else. I think it’s an error. Certainly drivers wishing to make a right turn have to and do wait for pedestrians, even if that means holding up traffic behind them until the light changes.
Maybe Frans was thinking about traffic lights at very large intersections, where there are more phases than usual to traffic lights, allowing for cars to make turns separately from allowing pedestrians to cross. But that is true worldwide where you have an intersection of, say, two 6-lane roads.
May just be another sign of the creeping Americanization of Central Europe
I don’t know about Americanization, but it certainly is in line with the general decline of deference to rules and government that started in the 60s, and with the vanishing of that breed of citizens who would openly criticize rule-breakers in public, which was still frequent during my childhood in the 70s. When I was younger, I thought that tendency was an unalloyed good; now I sometimes think that we also lost something and public life has become ruder due to it.
@Y
No, this is simply the way most traffic lights I encountered in Illinois worked, and I believe in Michigan and Wisconsin as well. I’ve heard that in California unsuspecting Europeans have been assaulted by the local police department for crossing the street.
The way a horrible outdated Belgian intersection works is something like this:
1. The traffic lights are at the intersection, so you can’t see them if you creep forward. (In America, if you’re at that part of the intersection, you can’t even cross because all the cars are too far forward. Also the crossing is ludicrously minuscule.)
2. The traffic lights are on some stupid timer.
3. The pedestrian/cycling lights turn green *first*, some 5-10 seconds before the car lights, making sure they’re visible.
4. You can then walk to the *central island*, and they’re usually designed so that the next stretch might sometimes turn green around the time you get there.
What I described above is atrocious, for the record. Modern Dutch designs from ca. 1980 are vastly superior, as are Belgian designs from post-2010 or so.
Now, at an American intersection:
1. Cars are all too far forward because the traffic lights are put up in such a manner you can’t not see them. You can barely utilize the ludicrously minuscule crossing if you happen to be in that area.
2. The traffic lights are also on some stupid timer.
3. The pedestrian lights turn green simultaneously with the cars, and there’s a sign saying to let cars turn right first.
4. Now that the cars turned and the light turned red again, there’s no central island to take refuge. You have to cross all 6 or 8 lanes in one go.
Whoever designed these things has simply never walked a single step in their life.
@Frans: In Illinois, pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks (unless, obviously, they are facing a “DON’T WALK” sign).
@Brett
So you’re saying that a sign integrated as part of the pedestrian light telling people to wait for cars to turn right before crossing is not equivalent to a don’t walk sign when there are cars turning right (i.e., always), but that contrary to the sign explicitly stating so you have the right of way regardless?
If so, that would be rather ridiculous and the drivers certainly don’t seem to know it. 😉
Edit: interestingly, quickly checking on streetview might suggest Illinois removed those signs and replaced them with incidental “yield for pedestrians” signs for drivers instead.
FWIW I have recently noticed (which may or may not mean it’s a very recent change!) that at intersections in midtown Manhattan the “walk” signals for pedestrians now click on several seconds before the green light for drivers (and, theoretically, bicyclists …) going the same way, with all drivers at the intersection having a simultaneous red light during the interim period. I assume this is based on some theory of reducing the instance of certain sorts of unfortunate incidents, and/or reducing automobile use in the area by making it even more cumbersome/slow than it had previously been.
@Frans: I was suggesting that you were perhaps misremembering where you saw those signs. I don’t remember them from Illinois, which I have been visiting regularly all my life.
@J.W. Brewer: In one of his books, Jearl Walker discusses the reason for having a all directions have a red simultaneously. For fast-moving vehicles, the long-standardized yellow light durations do not actually give some drivers who do not have time to stop enough time to clear the intersection either. Having a brief red for everyone solved that problem. That is unrelated the the pedestrian situation, however.
@J.W. Brewer
As I said above, giving pedestrians/cyclists the green light a few seconds earlier to prevent accidents predates my birth. That’s great to hear! See timestamp 3:21 in the Not Just Bikes video I linked above.
I’m not sure what to make of that simultaneous red though. That doesn’t sound like it makes much sense. See 7:03 for how we do that here in Europe. (But not nearly enough in Belgium.)
@Brett
Most definitely in Illinois.
I just realized on streetview that perhaps those signs are still there after all. There’s a sign under the button you press that I’d barely even noticed due to a lack of resolution.
In case you want to check it out in person, the intersection of Lake Cook Rd and N Arlington Heights Rd had that written on them for sure back in ’08. I remember very distinctly because I didn’t “see” a sign. I experienced it.
Frans, I looked up that intersection (in Arlington Heights, right?) And yes, this kind of intersection—no sidewalks, narrow crosswalks, miserly traffic lights—is common in the car-loving, pedestrian-hating suburbs of a certain era. But much of the United States is not like that, and I suspect some other countries are like that or worse (Dubai?)
@Y In Arlington Heights, yes, but there are certainly sidewalks there, at least at that intersection?
In the Google View it looked like on some sides the lawn goes right down to the road. You can walk on it but it clearly wasn’t meant for pedestrians.
FWIW, I guess I think of the core and maybe only sense of “jaywalking” as “crossing a street on foot outside of a designated crosswalk, in a context where designated crosswalks exist and are intended to be the exclusive paths for pedestrian street-crossing.” “Crossing a street within a crosswalk but inappropriately because e.g. in the face of a DON’T WALK sign” seems like a different sort of thing that I wouldn’t use that label for. I don’t know the extent to which U.S.municipal codes treat these as separate offenses (theoretical or otherwise) versus simply different ways of accomplishing what the code treats as a single offense.
I agree with JWB’s definition, as I think would most New Yorkers.
When I wrote earlier that “jaywalking” seemed like a safer, more dependable method of crossing the street I wasn’t talking about anywhere particularly close to any traffic lights, quite the contrary. The rest is but a partial explanation why.
For comparison, our road codes only require you to use a crosswalk if you’re within 20 meters of one.
—
@Y Oh, I think you’re referring to the little park thing. Yes, that would be a conundrum if you needed to be somewhere that would otherwise necessitate crossing the street an additional two times. Most of the parks (or rather: “nature preserves”) were fairly nice (and deserted!); that particular one not so much. The rest of the sidewalks is fine, at least if you have properly functioning legs. I can’t see people in wheelchairs or with walkers using those slabs of concrete. (And in practice I didn’t see *anyone* using them, pretty much ever.)
There is or has been some NYC-specific ordinance against “jaywalking.” I don’t have the text handy and as of 2020 various members of the city council were trying to get the law eliminated. (An article in the Queens Eagle said that in calendar 2019 only 397 jaywalking tickets were issued citywide and 40% of those were issued in one of three precincts in the Bronx where enforcement levels were apparently higher for whatever idiosyncratic reasons.)
Statewide, there is no general prohibition against a pedestrian crossing a street/road wherever they like, subject to the pedestrian’s general obligation to yield the right of way to motorists if not crossing at a crosswalk.
Oh no, this varies in space, not in time. In Berlin, if you cross a red light, random strangers will scold you.
*pause for gasping*
In Hamburg, I’m told, people cross freely; they’re not Prussians, they’re seafarers, and on the high seas there’s always enough space to get around each other.
In Vienna, people wait for a while to see if there’s traffic approaching after all, and if it’s not, they cross.
In Paris, they walk regardless, and the drivers let them. The Viennese would probably run them over, stop, turn around and curse their remains loudly.
Those actually turn the lights red for the cars and let you cross within a few seconds in the US. This side of the Pond they make you wait for the appropriate phase in the cycle, even if that’s a whole cycle away.
Those actually turn the lights red for the cars and let you cross within a few seconds in the US.
This too varies in space. In NYC, at least when I was there, they seemed to do nothing at all.
i have never been in a place in the u.s. where the crosswalk buttons appeared to do anything.
That certainly doesn’t describe traffic lights anywhere I’ve been in the US, which all very much used dumb timer cycles. It does describe quite a few here in Belgium, including the one closest to my home, but Belgium is also still full of rather dumb cycles in many places. I do wish everywhere would upgrade to 1980s technology like the Netherlands already.
Crossings at junctions here usually cycle through, and I think often put the green man up even if no one has actually pressed the button, because the traffic might be stopped anyway to let a different set of traffic go.
Crossings which are just somewhere along a stretch of road usually don’t change unless someone has pressed the button – although with mixed results, there’s one near here with crossings to and from a central island where one side changes almost immediately and the other side not until after you’ve given up on it and crossed in a natural gap and gone away.
David M.: In Paris, they walk regardless, and the drivers let them.
Parisians give right of way according to perceived desperation. That goes for cars as well as pedestrians (and I would think bikes, but I’ve never had occasion to try). The more effort you’re willing to make (or risk to take) to get through, the more effort everyone else will make to help you.
The intersection closest to the last place I lived in Sweden was on what I guess you could call a smart cycle. In its full glory, there were separate phases for cars straight+right, cars straight + pedestrians, cars left, in parallel from a pair of opposite directions, and then the same for the crossing directions. In the rush hours all phases except the ones for pedestrians were pretty long in the interest of getting some flow going, and the whole cycle felt interminable. But it had sensors on all lanes and buttons for the pedestrians and would skip phases that noone was waiting for — on occasions when I had to cross on foot at like 3 am it would show red in all directions as I approached, but my crosswalk turned green the instant I pushed the button. [Working IT at a newspaper house, you take your service windows when you can — between the lunch papers shipping to the printers at 3.30am and the morning paper’s home delivery customer service opening at 6am].
Maybe that’s the 80s tech that Frans describes.
Relatedly, in Denmark and Sweden it’s common to have green right-pointing arrow lights beside the main green to indicate that the relevant crosswalk currently has a red light. In Berlin there seems to be a blinking amber light mounted where a left-turning car driver would be looking, to indicate that the crosswalk they need to pass has a green light.
(Also the main lights here are usually “after” the intersection, or both before and after, so you can easily see them even if you creep over the stop line. [Which you shouldn’t, that counts as entering the intersection on a red light and will earn you a demerit]. There are a few exceptions where you more or less have to stick your head out the window to check the light, we don’t likes it my precious. Germany is full of those, so we don’t likes driving in Germany).
Sweden, or in particular Stockholm, has lots of those button things. But most of them “trigger” automatically in the daytime so you don’t need to push them except at night — resulting in harsh words from people behind you if you don’t do the unneeded but conventional button push in the daytime, and a different set (I would hope) waiting through several cycles at night because they are used to getting a green without using the button.
Lars M.: Also the main lights here are usually “after” the intersection, or both before and after, so you can easily see them even if you creep over the stop line.
Yes. It annoys the hell out of me when that’s not the case.
The Scandinavian countries are pretty similar in my experience, except for the Danish priority cycle lanes, which we tend to forget all about and step right out into.
I like “open crossings”, i.e. red lights for cars in both directions and all four pedestrian crossings green simultaneously, so that you can cross diagonally. Efficient for everybody, and avoiding right turns in conflict with pedestrians.
The Viennese would probably run them over, stop, turn around and curse their remains loudly.
That also would describe Almaty in the 90s, including at crosswalks without traffic lights, which motorists seemed to view as some kind of street art with no significance. Then the traffic police started to clamp down on this, and since the early 2000s you can use crosswalks when cars approach without risking life and limb.
This side of the Pond they make you wait for the appropriate phase in the cycle, even if that’s a whole cycle away.
As described for other countries, that depends – at busy intersections during day time, that is often the case, but there are pedestrian crossings marked with traffic lights that only turn red for motorists when a pedestrian presses the button.
I like “open crossings”, i.e. red lights for cars in both directions and all four pedestrian crossings green simultaneously, so that you can cross diagonally
Never seen that kind of thing, and I wouldn’t trust it. Crossing diagonally? Probably not even in the small hours when there is no car around.
I like them too, but I think you need a ‘squarer’ city than mine is. Edinburgh does have some – Western Corner is the last place I dashed across diagonally, I think – but as often you’ve got junctions like Haymarket or Tollcross
Sweden, or in particular Stockholm, has lots of those button things. But most of them “trigger” automatically in the daytime so you don’t need to push them except at night — resulting in harsh words from people behind you if you don’t do the unneeded but conventional button push in the daytime, and a different set (I would hope) waiting through several cycles at night because they are used to getting a green without using the button.
I like “open crossings”, i.e. red lights for cars in both directions and all four pedestrian crossings green simultaneously, so that you can cross diagonally. Efficient for everybody, and avoiding right turns in conflict with pedestrians.
In Moscow, or at least the eastern parts thereof that I’m used to, both are very common (often on the same intersection), with the former being extremely recent (roughly contemporary with the Covid, as I recall, which really annoyed me at the time because it meant everyone would have to push the same button and risk infection).
But AFAIK we don’t have anyone ranting about lack of daytime button pushes, because (again) it’s a very recent thing, so most people aren’t used to the buttons anyway.
(Some lower-traffic areas had button intersections before they became common, and those usually functioned in the daytime too.
I think the Moscow version usually has you wait until it’s the right phase in the cycle, which can easily be a minute in some cases, but as, again, they are normally automatic in daytime, it’s usually not a problem.)
I like them too, but I think you need a ‘squarer’ city than mine is.
Eastern Izmaylovo (and, to a lesser extent, Izmaylovo proper) is a particularly gridlike area even by Moscow standards, which probably contributes to the frequency of various intersections.
Wikipedia:
Seems like Shibuya Crossing is so busy it officially only allows use of one of the two diagonals
The Viennese would probably run them over, stop, turn around and curse their remains loudly.
Interesting that the Viennese have leisure for such indulgences. In Taipei, the single most terrifying city in which I have ever been a pedestrian, the drivers would run them over without even noticing in their rush to reach their destinations. When I first arrived (this is around 1977), I don’t know how long I spent waiting to cross one of the wide streets, trying to time it so I would have a maximum chance of surviving; finally I just joined one of the masses of people stampeding out into traffic and prayed that the lions would go for some of the other antelopes. I got used to the process, but it never failed to scare the hell out of me. (Fortunately, some of the main streets had pedestrian overpasses.)
Correct, that’s ’80s tech. Modern tech auto-detects everything, not just cars. Also not tech-related but design-related, there are modern intersections that default to red for cars and it’s the cars who have to proverbially press the button.
The stuff about buttons reminds me of the widespread belief that the “close door” buttons in lifts/elevators are in fact placebos.
(I don’t think this is actually true, but I can certainly see how the idea might have arisen.)
Frans: there are modern intersections that default to red for cars and it’s the cars who have to proverbially press the button.
Yes, I like those too, especially when driving at night, because a well-tuned system will give you green before you reach the light whichever way you arrive. There was one like that for a while, some ten years ago, not far from my house. The problem was tech-related. Sometimes it didn’t notice cars from one specific side, and you’d end up having to drive on red in an empty street. And it didn’t notice bikes at all. Instead of fixing the tech they reverted to a more old-fashioned design.
@David Eddyshaw: The “close doors” button in an elevator actually may or may not be wired up to do what it says (at least under normal circumstances). An elevator maintenance guy
once showed me how this works. He he was working on the wiring of an elevator’s control panel, and she showed me that there were two ways to connect up the “close doors” button. (Or maybe it was a dip switch; it was a long time ago.) In one configuration, the button actually functioned for normal users. In the other, it only worked when the elevator was in firefighter mode.
I think police tolerance toward jaywalkers is correlated with that of drivers. If you cross a busy street in Manhattan, drivers won’t slow down, presumably assuming you know what you are doing. In Chicago they seem to actually accelerate when they see a jaywalker (I thought I’d imagined it but I heard of others who had had that impression.) In Los Angeles drivers seem indulgent and timid when it comes to pedestrians, jaywalkers included, though they become wild daredevils once on a freeway.
I now have a vague memory of the “watch out for cars turning right” signs Frans mentioned. I don’t think they negate pedestrians’ right-of-way. Rather, they are cautioning them to be aware of drivers who wouldn’t expect them.
@Trond
That’s what they do *if* there are no cyclists. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a car defaults to red but a car goes first. 😉
@Y I’m quite sure it said something like “yield” or “wait”, not a very different phrasing like “watch out,” “careful,” or “caution” which I would’ve dismissed as a rather silly notice rather than an evil one.
The stuff about buttons reminds me of the widespread belief that the “close door” buttons in lifts/elevators are in fact placebos
The Chinese I observed in the 1996 in Beijing and Shanghai certainly didn’t share that belief; they immediately pressed the “close” button whenever they entered a lift, to make sure they wouldn’t have to wait one second for other people who wanted to use the lift as well. And the buttons worked.
I haven’t been in China since; I hope that this inconsiderate behaviour isn’t typical.
In my mind, the placebo “Close Door” buttons were placed there by moralists, to teach people a lesson about impatience.
They generally don’t press themselves for time. For example, they’re the slowest walkers on Earth yet to be measured, at 2 km/h – I learned that from a conference poster in the anthropology department of the University of Vienna.
Also, priorities. Taibei sounds more like Spaceballs: “We brake for nobody”…
Taibei sounds more like Spaceballs: “We brake for nobody”…
Exactly right. But the food is great, so at least you die happy!
@Trond
If the spam detection allows me, here’s a video of modern traffic lights (as opposed to 1980s traffic lights) called “Dutch traffic lights are smarter!” by Jason Slaughter (Not Just Bikes).
vm.tiktok.com/ZMFfYrgVu
Jen in Edinburgh: Edinburgh does have some – Western Corner is the last place I dashed across diagonally, I think – but as often you’ve got junctions like Haymarket or Tollcross
Yes, I noticed some in New Town, but I’m not able now to tell which ones. Noticed, because I’m not used to see them abroad, and I didn’t trust it at first. I’ll admit that may also be because all cars come upon you from the wrong side.
(I was in Edinburgh a couple of weeka ago, for less than 48 hours, with no room for deviation from a tight schedule. Otherwise I would have tried to contact the local branch of the hattery.)
Frans: If the spam detection allows me, here’s a video of modern traffic lights (as opposed to 1980s traffic lights) called “Dutch traffic lights are smarter!” by Jason Slaughter (Not Just Bikes).
Yes, it’s efficient. The system could have been programmed with even tighter fit of the pedestrian lights to walking speed, but maybe they’re meant to accomodate joggers as well. And too bad the video has no cycles crossing in the cycle lane.
@rozele:
That’s surprising! I agree those buttons don’t seem to have any perceptible impact on the timing of the traffic lights, but in my experience pressing them does typically induce a fairly funny voice to announce: “Wait!” I’ve certainly heard it both in Boston and in Nashville. But maybe the voice is not funny to natives.
@Frans:
Most likely the sign you encountered was not evil, but confusing when encountered in combination with general suburban unfriendliness to pedestrians.
Google Streetview images for that intersection go back to 2007. Remarkably and of linguistic interest, the intersection used to show stopping drivers a babysitting ad in Polish:
I knew of the Chicago Polish community, but I didn’t expect it to remain Polish-speaking to this day.
Officially, the traffic light poles used to bear signs with the reminder “Don’t Drink and Drive”, then replaced by wordless reflectors, then by nothing at all. There was never a sign telling drivers they had the right of way. Hence, the usual rules applied as laid down by the Illinois Vehicle Code, which (naturally) says pedestrians do.
Signs for pedestrians at that intersection are not readable at the distance and resolution of Google Streetview. However, the pedestrian push buttons look identical to this one, featured in a 2008 Federal Highway Administration manual and photographed in nearby Naperville, IL. Its notice is simply:
Before cars, it was the conventional wisdom that it was safer to cross a street in the middle of the block, as you had to deal with traffic from just two directions, whereas at an intersection it was four directions. There were no traffic lights or other controls at the time, of course. Except perhaps a policeman in the middle of the intersection.
Traffic signals around here don’t all work the same way, depending on when they were installed. During the pandemic, some of them were changed to just timers, with the buttons inactive–presumably for sanitary reasons. They’re now back to the way they were. On weekends, the buttons will give you a walk signal right away, but on weekdays you have to wait for the cycle. (That is, where a main street crosses a secondary street.)
Some intersections have strips in the road that detect the presence of a car. It’s possible to trigger them with a bicycle if you carefully ride exactly on top of the strip, but it doesn’t always work.
The trouble with the car detection technique is when two traffic lights are close to each other, they tend to get out of phase, causing massive backups. We have quite a few of these. Locals learn to avoid them.
The concept that computers could be used to control traffic lights doesn’t seem to have caught on here, but I suppose traffic engineers are a conservative bunch.
Two of the latest inventions here: timers on pedestrian lights — possible since they started using LED honeycombs instead of incandescents with (tinted glass) Fresnel collimators (not very efficient, especially not when masked for green/red man lights). There are enough red LEDs interspersed in the green one and vice versa to implement a two-digit 7-segment display, counting down to the next change. Mostly used on long-cycle intersections to appease potential jaywalkers; the one I’m most often at seems to be 70 or 80 seconds depending on the phase of the moon or the prevailing winds. (I haven’t timed it often enough to discern a pattern). (In principle they could probably do both the red man and the green man and the two timers in a single “light,” but they don’t. Yet).
Also little pattern-detecting cameras to add a pedestrian phase when people are waiting, instead of a button. (Mounted directly above, possibly to avoid privacy concerns, or maybe to avoid false positives. Though they can give false negatives too, and then you’re stood watching a red man while the cars next to you get to turn right. When that happened to me, a police patrol happened to be waiting for the same light, so I asked them — they recommended just using the crosswalk when there was a green for the cars. [Of course I didn’t get the extra phase time so I could only make it to the middle island where the camera did work as intended]).
There are enough red LEDs interspersed in the green one and vice versa to implement a two-digit 7-segment display, counting down to the next change. Mostly used on long-cycle intersections to appease potential jaywalkers; the one I’m most often at seems to be 70 or 80 seconds depending on the phase of the moon or the prevailing winds.
In Moscow, where the cycles can get longer than that, your typical traffic light timer actually has 16 segments – two full 7-segment digits and a two-segment 1 squished to the left of them! They need it, too, because 130-second timers aren’t too uncommon (though most are in the 50-80 range, and some even shorter).
Every so often there’s a timer that didn’t implement the third digit, so when a three-digit number is required it just blinks 99 until the internal count reaches 99 and the timer can act normally.
Implementation is extremely sporadic. There can be timered and timer-less lights on the same intersection, on the same fixture, or even on the same crossing in different directions. Every so often the lights get replaced and the timer can get added, or removed, or changed to a different model, seemingly at random.
Now that “smart” lights are common, those of course can’t have a reliable timer (because they don’t know in advance if the button will be pressed this cycle), so they count down the green – which is consistent – but not the red (if they bother to count down at all).
I knew of the Chicago Polish community, but I didn’t expect it to remain Polish-speaking to this day.
I frequently used Warsaw airport in the early 2000s, and remember lots of Polish-speaking people waiting for flights to Chicago. So it seems that only 20 years ago, the Polish community there still maintained active contact with and kept being replenished from the motherland.
Officially, the traffic light poles used to bear signs
With this following directly on your remark about the Polish community, I first read that as “the traffic light Poles” 🙂
What Hans said: the folks in Chicago speaking Polish these days (and to a lesser extent in other parts of the U.S) are generally not preserving (merely) their great-grandparents’ L1, they are preserving their own childhood L1 or that of their recent-ish (post-Cold-War or at least post-Solidarity) immigrant parents.
That population may continue to grow, not least as, for geopolitical reasons, Poland was a few years ago made eligible for the U.S. “Visa Waiver Program,” meaning that citizens of Poland can now generally enter the U.S. as “tourists” for 90 days w/o formally getting a visa and then, in some percentage of cases, “forget” to leave by day 91 and disappear into the underground economy. Traditionally, one of the criteria for being a VWP country was being sufficiently prosperous that the risk that any given “tourist” would have an economic motivation to overstay was pretty low (although this was certainly an issue with Irish-citizen “tourists” back in the ’80’s and ’90’s), but the “valued-Nato-ally” dynamic apparently won out over the “easily-exploited loophole” concern. So a potentially significant increment over and above the number of Polish immigrants who enter with all of their paperwork in order. (Trying to be just descriptive here, not morally judgmental about the decisions/actions of anyone involved.)
@Giacomo
I’ll grant that it’s not impossible I’m confusing things and that it did say something like watch, but if so I think it’ll simply be because I hadn’t thought about it in the 14 years since. I may not recall the exact text or even in what form it was displayed, but I do recall that there were quite a few drivers who were very annoyed at me for forcing them to wait two seconds while turning right. And when I was driving in the vicinity a car pulled up next to me and tried to challenge me to a drag race…
@Frans:
I should admit I’ve never personally experienced Chicago suburbs. However, I’ve been to fairly suburban places in the US, and I agree drivers there give the impression of finding pedestrians (let alone cyclists) a nuisance that shouldn’t be interfering with motor-vehicle ownership of the road. That’s what I meant by “general suburban unfriendliness to pedestrians.”
I don’t even feel I can fairly blame those suburban drivers. I believe it was originally Jane Jacobs who noted there are cities built for pedestrians and cities built for cars, and people typically have a strong preference for one kind. I know I do, and I’ve had the privilege of spending all my life in old cities built for pedestrians. I find it very reasonable they’re increasingly restricting car access to their roads. I’m not sure it’s any more unfair for car-based suburbia to restrict pedestrian access to theirs.
Likewise, the annoyed and annoying drivers you encountered may be the fair mirror image of NYC jaywalkers. The law says pedestrians cannot cross the road outside of a crosswalk in Manhattan, and also that they have the right of way at any crosswalk in suburban Chicago. But in actual practice …
The Chicago suburbs are definitely not the worst I’ve experienced in America. They actually have sidewalks in most places — though the word sidewalk, too, is madness! cf. British pavement for a better word — as well as a paltry amount of crossings. But both of them are there, and there are parks and those weird strip malls within walking distance.
If she were Dutch she would’ve said something like people or humans, definitely not pedestrians. Cyclists and people with walkers or in wheelchairs are people too. 😉
That ignores the reality that driving in America is a bad experience. I doubt car-based can be the right word for that.
though the word sidewalk, too, is madness! cf. British pavement for a better word
I imagine calling it “trottoir” wouldn’t work very well…
If she were Dutch she would’ve said something like people or humans, definitely not pedestrians. Cyclists and people with walkers or in wheelchairs are people too.
I mean, cities built for pedestrians absolutely exist; Italy is full of them. It’s just that nobody’s been building those any more for ages, partly because they’re so inconvenient for anyone who’s not a pedestrian. Probably stopped around when sufficiently many people became able to afford a horse and cart.
Cyclists are a separate problem; they’re too fast for pedestrian lanes, too slow (and too hard to notice, comparatively) for car lanes, and making separate cyclist options means you need to either fit three networks (which is far harder geometrically), ban cars, or ban pedestrians.
Reportedly some Dutch places take the “ban cars” option, and I think I’ve heard of the “ban pedestrians” option [i.e. allowing only cars and bicycles] being used somewhere too, but not sure where.
Wheelchairs, on the other hand, shouldn’t be too problematic unless your city layout either 1) has such narrow lanes that you can’t actually walk past a wheelchair [and/or let two wheelchairs pass each other], or 2) makes heavy use of stairs. I think I have heard of cities where 2 is a big problem, but can’t name any offhand. (Veliko Tarnovo comes close.) AFAIK cities where 1 is a problem are pretty much limited to Italy [maybe some sporadic examples elsewhere in Western Europe?] and some of the more car-focused parts of USA.
That ignores the reality that driving in America is a bad experience. I doubt car-based can be the right word for that.
From what I’ve heard, driving is a bad experience approximately everywhere, maybe slightly more so in America; it’s just that in America most (all?) of the alternatives are even worse experiences.
That ignores the reality that driving in America is a bad experience.
That is a massive generalization, and completely untrue in much of the country. Yes, I-95 from New York to New Haven is a horror show, but I quite enjoy driving in New Hampshire/Vermont. The roads are good, there is not much traffic, and scenery is splendid, especially this time of year. You can’t beat the Kancamagus Highway, either as a road or as a shibboleth. Northern New England also still has all sorts of quaint roadside dining establishments selling ice cream, fried clams, lobster rollls etc. so it is easy to take a break. A summer roadtrip to the Maine coast or up to Quebec is usually a highlight of our visits back to the US.
I even like driving in Boston. Storrow Drive is a blast, once you know what you are doing and you aren’t stuck in rush hour.
Nothing in the US is as bad as Naples. A friend of mine and his partner made the mistake of driving into the city for Capodanno this year. After having to dodge firecrackers, navigate narrow one way streets and get verbally abused by aggressive moped drivers, he had a literal panic attack. Almost got hospitalized.
You still need to be careful–look both ways–but in terms of crossing the road Taipei has improved quite a bit since the 70s. And there are many open crossings where you can cross diagonally, especially near schools. There’s one just down the road from my place, and I’ve crossed diagonally there many times, so far without incident.
That ignores the reality that driving in America is a bad experience.
I agree with Vanya: That is a massive generalization, and completely untrue in much of the country. There are large parts of the country that are built entirely for it, and driving there is a pleasure.
How is “pavement” better than “sidewalk”?
“Sidewalk” is a fine example of English’s powerful ability to coin words by simple juxtaposition.
“Pavement” is a more general word being used in a specialised sense. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, assuming sense-disambiguation is easier for you to process than a separate lexical item.
FWIW the Irish word is “footpath”; which is also a specialised sense, but less of a semantic leap than “pavement”.
That ignores the reality that driving in America is a bad experience.
Driving in Kano (in Nigeria) put me in mind of the old saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes.”
My impression from what I’ve read is that both driving and pedestrianizing in Lagos are hellish experiences.
I think I have already recounted the tale of a Nigerian colleague who used to live in fairly central Lagos when he was studying for postgraduate exams in surgery. He told me that when he got bored with the books he would look out of the window for a bit, and would be sure to see a tourist getting mugged within half an hour or so. Broke the monotony …
@Vanya
The Ardennes have many roads like that. They’re all very nice. That doesn’t mean Belgium isn’t worse to drive in than the Netherlands. 🙂
I’ve driven in the Naples area and it’s certainly worrisome when you see that half of the other cars have bumps and scratches. One time there I drove through a green light and someone sped through their red light on the right; I was too stunned/busy not colliding to honk, even though it was probably the only situation I ever encountered in Italy where honking would’ve actually been appropriate.
@mollymooly
A sidewalk. Compare sideshow. Don’t take it too seriously. 😉
We have a winner. ^_^
When I took driving lessons (in the US) I asked my teacher if he ever had a student who failed the test. He said he had had one that he’d given up on and didn’t recommend for her to take the test. She was from Manila and had had a license there, and couldn’t break the habit of non-stop craning her neck and looking in all directions while driving.
craning her neck and looking in all directions while driving
Compared to that, driving in Lebanon is simple – the only rule is that you have to look out what happens in front of you (or rather, in the direction in which you are driving – if you back up, you need to look behind you). It’s incumbent on everyone for whom you are in the direction they move to brake or lower their speed as necessary to avoid collisions. The system works quite well, until it doesn’t – I have seen less accidents in Beirut than in other comparable cities, but those that happen are frequently grave.
I asked my teacher if he ever had a student who failed the test
In Ireland such a question is inconceivable, like asking a military veteran have they ever used the F-word.
What do the other 40%-ish do?
It sounds funny, but it makes me want to visit Ireland.
@Y
There’s nothing exceptional about that. I’m one of the 52% who passed the first time.
If you failed it most likely means that you didn’t show you could safely overtake a cyclist, that you didn’t show you could make granny walking feel safe, that you didn’t show you could accelerate and overtake properly in the left lane at the traffic light next to slower traffic in the right lane, that you failed to give precedence to traffic from the right, that you didn’t show the confidence necessary to merge in rush hour traffic, that you didn’t notice the bus turning on their left blinkers, or maybe that you failed at for example parallel parking. Of course it could also be more mechanical, like stalling the car, though I think that should be rather unusual. The examiner will also pretend to be a dumb passenger, asking silly questions so you can show you can deal with passenger distraction.
However, in the Netherlands we put into place an optional more or less halfway to three quarters done with driving lessons test. If I hadn’t taken that I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d failed the real test the first time due to nerves. What that means is I didn’t have to show things like parking and three point turning anymore at the final exam, but much more important, I knew what it was like. Of course you practice, but it’s just not the same without the stakes. I did fail at precedence from the right during the in-between test, so I still had to show that during the final exam. The in-between test is mostly about those types of maneuvers like parking and turning that don’t directly have to do with traffic. I wonder if the 50% who fail decided to opt out.
The OED (entry not updated since 1933)
You mean: First entered in 1933, last fully revised in 1976 in the H-N Supplement. Yrs., Burchfield Appreciation Society.
Burchfield dropped all three of the 1933 Supplement’s quotations and added eight new ones from both before and after 1933, from various locations demonstrating that it was well established outside the U.S. The current online version has added back the three dropped quotations (waste not, want not) and sorted them into sub-entries jaywalker n., jaywalk v., and jaywalking n., but that’s tidying up the 1976 entry, not full revision.
will presumably catch up to this derivation when they get around to revising the jaywalker entry, which currently says simply “Etymology: < jay n. 3d + walker n.¹.”
Does it need catching up? That sense of jay is “A stupid or silly person; a simpleton”; no one disputes that jaywalker is derived from the then-current jay for stupid, or rather unsophisticated, person.
Actually, it’s the OED’s entry for jay that needs major revision, as they have not yet sorted out the quotations for that sense from other, much older insulting senses: “an impertinent chatterer”, “a showy or flashy woman; one of light character”, and “a person absurdly dressed; a gawk or ‘sight’.” (They’ve also partly orphaned the cross-reference from jaywalker by re-organizing the uses as “attributive or as adj. in sense 3, dull, unsophisticated; inferior, poor (U.S. colloquial).” into a separate sense.) And the definition needs to be more precise, since it doesn’t mean just generally stupid but more specifically unsophisticated or naive, ‘a greenhorn, or rube’ as Merriam-Webster says. Green’s separates the different senses; RHHDAS has entries as n. and adj. only for the “gullible, greenhorn” sense.
Thanks! I bow my head in shame at my feckless lack of Appreciation for Burchfield the Reviser.
Sometime back when I was looking for the date of Kansas City’s famous ordinance, Google informed me that it was repealed on May 6, 2021, after city staff found that “of the jaywalking tickets given out over the last three years, 65% were given to Black pedestrians (despite the fact they make up only 30% of the city’s population).” Some of the coverage remarked on how Kansas City was “the place where jaywalking got its name”.