Jaywalking is the act of pedestrians walking in or crossing a roadway if that act contravenes traffic regulations. The term jay-walker originated in the United States as a derivation of the phrase jay-driver (the word jay meaning a greenhorn, or rube), referring to people who drove horse-drawn carriages and automobiles on the wrong side of the road. The term is not a historically neutral one.
The arrival of the automobile in the opening decades of the 20th century led to increasingly deadly conflicts in the street, and the public was generally unsympathetic to motorists or to early attempts to legislate pedestrian behavior.In response, the US automobile industry and associated organizations undertook public campaigns to frame pedestrians, newly impugned as jay-walkers, as a problematic element in the new automotive age. The first widely successful criminalization of jaywalking was enacted in Los Angeles in 1925, using legislation drafted by the auto lobby that inspired similar ordinances in other American cities.
