The Crime That Wasn't: How Motordom Invented 'Jaywalking' to Seize the American Street

The Public Commons

Before the automobile, the American street was a shared domain. It was not merely a conduit for travel but a public square, a playground, and a marketplace. People strolled, children played stickball, vendors hawked wares, and horse-drawn carts ambled along. This chaotic, vibrant commons belonged to everyone. Then, a fast, heavy, and deadly machine arrived, and a quiet war began for the soul of the street.

A Red-Stained Revolution

The first cars were a menace. By the 1920s, with mass production in full swing, the death toll was staggering. In 1924 alone, automobiles killed over 20,000 Americans, a horrifying number of them children playing where they had always played. The public reaction was visceral. Newspapers ran editorial cartoons of the Grim Reaper driving a speeding roadster. Cities considered installing mechanical governors on cars to limit their speed. Drivers, often seen as arrogant joyriders from the wealthy class, were the undisputed villains. The street, it seemed, would have to be regulated to tame the machine.

Manufacturing a Scapegoat

The burgeoning automotive industry—a powerful coalition of manufacturers, dealers, and enthusiast clubs known as 'motordom'—faced an existential public relations crisis. Their solution was audacious. Instead of re-engineering the car to be safer, they would re-engineer the public's mind. The goal: to shift the blame for the carnage from the driver and their machine to the person on foot. To do this, they needed a villain. They found one in the 'jay'.

The Weaponization of a Word

In early 20th-century slang, a 'jay' was a clueless rustic, a country bumpkin lost and gawking in the big city. Motordom seized this slur and attached it to the act of walking. They began a relentless campaign to popularize the term 'jaywalker,' painting anyone who dared to cross a street mid-block as an ignorant fool obstructing the march of progress. It was a brilliant, insidious piece of social engineering.

A Campaign to Clear the Streets

The 'jaywalker' campaign wasn't just verbal. Auto clubs funded safety programs in schools that taught children to fear the street, reframing the public space as a dangerous zone. They produced newsreels for cinemas depicting actors in goofy costumes bumbling into the path of cars, inviting the audience's ridicule. They even sponsored Boy Scout troops to hand out 'jaywalker' warnings to pedestrians on the sidewalk.

The message was clear: the modern street is for the efficient passage of vehicles. The pedestrian who obstructs this flow is a relic of a bygone era, a hazard not only to himself but to civilization itself.

Simultaneously, they lobbied city governments relentlessly, pushing for new traffic ordinances that restricted pedestrian movement to crosswalks and intersections. This lobbying effectively criminalized what had been, for all of human history, normal behavior.

The Road We Inherited

The campaign was a resounding success. Within a decade, the legal and cultural landscape had been transformed. The blame for collisions had effectively shifted. The person on foot was now legally and morally responsible for their own safety in a space that no longer belonged to them. The street, once a shared public commons, was redefined as a high-speed thoroughfare reserved for the automobile. This is the world we inherited—a world of crosswalk buttons, fences along sidewalks, and the deeply ingrained, manufactured belief that the person outside the car is the one who is out of place. The ghost of the jaywalker still haunts every traffic debate, a century-old reminder that the rules of the road were never inevitable. They were bought, sold, and relentlessly marketed.

Sources

• Jaywalking was invented by auto industry groups in the 1920s
• The Lobbying Trick That Blamed Pedestrians—Inventing ‘Jaywalking
• The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of ...
• The Invention of ‘Jaywalking’. In the 1920s, the public hated ...
• Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road
• The Forgotten History of How Automakers Invented ... - Portside