The term “jaywalking” is a pretty American term (that there is a term at all) invented by the car lobby way back when to stigmatize pedestrians. Of course it makes sense to cross the street (that’s what it’s called—there’s no dedicated word for it) if it is safe to do so.
And of course it would be madness on any always-busy street or on a road with four lanes or more.
Come to Mexico and that notion will be dispelled pretty quickly.
Here you can find pedestrians crossing anywhere they please, bikes going against you, street vendor carts, and cars still crossing after a red light... all at the same time.
I was in NYC just a couple of months ago and in comparison everything was quite orderly.
I drew my own conclusions too and had better understanding of how “it was orders I was following” happens.
Yup, Americans leave this impression all over the world. Loud, obnoxious tourists who don't think local laws and norms apply to them.
As Scott Alexander points out, these Americans counter intuitively are not being self critical when they say this, they are talking trash about the "other" Americans they don't like.
Americans are regarded as irrespectful, but treated well because they hope they leave a dollar tip.
When a foreigner comes to do bussiness, not just an American, we expect corruption and exploitation to come with it. We are hardly ever proven wrong.
Would you mind sharing the link to the post?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
It's long but worth reading. But under break VII contains the relevant part:
START QUOTE
My hunch – both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe, for whatever reason, identify “America” with the Red Tribe. Ask people for typically “American” things, and you end up with a very Red list of characteristics – guns, religion, barbecues, American football, NASCAR, cowboys, SUVs, unrestrained capitalism.
That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
Here is a popular piece published on a major media site called :America: A Big, Fat, Stupid Nation". Another: "America: A Bunch Of Spoiled, Whiny Brats". "Americans are ignorant, scientifically illiterate religious fanatics whose “patriotism” is actually just narcissism." "You Will Be Shocked At How Ignorant Americans Are, and we should Blame The Childish, Ignorant American People."
Needless to say, every single one of these articles was written by an American and read almost entirely by Americans. Those Americans very likely enjoyed the articles very much and did not feel the least bit insulted.
And look at the sources. HuffPo, Salon, Slate. Might those have anything in common?
On both sides, “American” can be either a normal demonym, or a code word for a member of the Red Tribe.
END QUOTE
In my experience left leaning (or really blue tribe, read the article for the difference) American travelers do the same thing to try to prove to foreigners that they "aren't the bad type of Americans" (ie, the right/red tribe) that they perceive that foreigners dislike (whereas most foreigners I encounter take for granted that all kinds of people come from all places and don't judge that much by nationality), the irony being that the foreigners don't usually ever say all that much negative about the US and it's the American's who are trying to distance themselves who end up being the ones who vocally dislike America (but really just the people they think are ignorant)
During the 2016 Trump campaign there was much talk about coal workers and such. Yet there are more yoga instructors than coal industry employees—not just miners but everyone employed by the coal industry.
> According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in February 2017, the industry employed 50,300 people. Note: that isn’t miners. That’s the whole industry. (An earlier estimate by the Census Bureau from 2014 had the number closer to 76,000 — still quite small). There are more yoga instructors in the United States than coal miners — and that gap will continue to increase.
> Now let’s do some comparisons. As Ingraham notes, the entire coal industry “employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby’s (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000). The country’s largest private employer, Walmart (2.2 million employees) provides roughly 28 times as many jobs as coal.” In other words, despite its historical importance, coal is negligible economically.
* https://legal-planet.org/2018/08/23/yoga-instructors-bend-co...
Didn't year much about the Yoga Lobby.
Jay walking also happens a lot in China unless some barrier or traffic warden is involved. This is the case in much of the developing world as well.
It's different in Poland for example. If you don't just go on a pedestrian crossing (no lights), no car will stop. Because of that it's more likely for people to cross on a red light because they know car drivers are trained to watch out for them. A really bad development. People die because of this.
A very helpful campaign in Germany were signs which told you to be a good example for children. It grew into the consciousness of the population and you very rarely see people cross on red when there are kids around. Also having green on demand buttons which give you FAST results helps too. They are very popular in Germany now.
Here in NYC people will cross as the light turns green and end up with an entire intersection at a standstill.
It's amazing because even my poorly trained Greyhound has picked up a concept of "we stop for something" at intersections. He's not quite sure what, but he'll wait for some signal from me.
Yet somehow people are unable to figure that out.
And you know what? I like it. Cars are given special treatment everywhere else in this country. I was in D.C. and VA last week and had to wait 5 minutes (!) to cross many intersections. So in NYC I sympathize for the commercial traffic and the people commuting from places without train coverage, but for everyone else, I don't really care if pedestrians hold them up. They could have been pedestrians too.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic
> Back then a 'jay' was basically some sort of boor or doofus. If you translated it to more modern english it would literally be idiotwalking or similar.
If other cultures don’t have some kind of stigmatic word for “crossing the street without pedestrian right-of-way” then of course it is American-specific. Just like how saying “person who has several sexual partners” and “s***” are supposed to communicate two very different things.
DC is one of the worst; it sometimes feels like the pedestrians and cars are in competition with each other, and each just violate the rules because there's zero expectation that the other will follow the rules.
I've seen older footages of Tokyo (1960s) where the streets were pretty chaotic and dirty. Also Miyazaki described how the rivers used to be very polluted, which inspired the bath scene in Spirited Away. Not sure at what point it changed.
Also remember Americans telling me Seoul being dirty in the 80s, but is generally cleaner than western cities these days.
The West Coast at least used to be more rule-abiding. Many years ago now, I remember a co-worker complaining he had gotten a ticket for jaywalking in San Francisco I think. Of course, these days you probably need to murder someone to get the police involved in SF but I digress.
And when I worked in a smaller city fairly near Boston, when going out to lunch, I was pretty much the only person who was inclined to just cross the street while my coworkers waited for the light.
So it does vary.
That would give people way more time to clear out the right turn lane each cycle and reduce incidences of people trying to force their way through pedestrians.
But people don't even respect the basic "don't walk" so it's asking a lot...
There are many studies that crosswalk actually increase the number of accidents because people feel safer and pay less attention when crossing them, so cities have been removing them in a lot of spots.
I cannot fathom her logic.