Rant: That $200 fine for jaywalking I got back in 1992 in downtown Austin still stings because the cop told me it was to 'prevent chaos' but now nobody even blinks at people crossing wherever they want.

I paid that ticket on the spot with cash I had saved for concert tickets, and now you see whole crowds just stepping off curbs mid-block with zero consequences, so has anyone else noticed how some of these old 'safety' laws just quietly disappear while others stick around for no good reason?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.val29d ago

Wait you actually paid it with concert money? That's brutal.

umar4929d ago

Sure but jaywalking was never really about safety, it was about making sure cars had the right of way and that was it. The law just quietly disappeared because nobody wanted to enforce it anymore, which is fine by me but I get why you're annoyed. You paid the tax on being early to that street crossing.

nelson.vera29d ago

Actually jaywalking laws weren't totally about giving cars the right of way. The term "jaywalking" itself came from a 1900s propaganda campaign by auto groups, that part is true. But the laws were also pushed by safety advocates who saw pedestrians getting killed by those early cars (which had terrible brakes, by the way). It was a weird mix of car companies wanting the roads and city planners thinking they could prevent accidents. The law didn't quietly disappear either, it just stopped being enforced in most places because cops got tired of writing tickets nobody cared about (or paying, in my case). So yeah, I paid my stupid tax, but the history is a little messier than just car companies throwing their weight around.