Depending on where you live, it’s obligatory to cross the street within a crosswalk unless you want to risk a jaywalking ticket that comes with a hefty fine. Further, if someone enters a street on foot and winds up injured or worse, it’s the pedestrian that is seen as the offending party. Today’s citizens accept this as the status quo, but as Joseph Stromberg writes in an article on Vox, it wasn’t always this way. Stromberg explains how streets in the early 20th Century were public spaces for pedestrians, horses, carriages, and cars were seen as enemies to street life where children were free to play. The rate of pedestrian deaths by car skyrocketed, and cars were extravagant, murderous machines that killed the common man with their callous indifference:

The public response to these deaths, by and large, was outrage. Automobiles were often seen as frivolous playthings, akin to the way we think of yachts today (they were often called "pleasure cars"). And on the streets, they were considered violent intruders.

So, how did these deadly, rich-people playthings come to own our streets? The answer to this, like so many other questions of ownership, can be found when you follow the money. The public outrage over pedestrian deaths led to auto sellers fretting over prospective loss of sales, in turn leading to lobbying for laws that restricted pedestrians to marked crosswalks. The new traffic laws were enforced through shame, and the term “jaywalking” was coined. Stromberg says, “During this era, the word "jay" meant something like "rube" or "hick" — a person from the sticks, who didn't know how to behave in a city,” and eventually the term caught on. It's now the norm to scoff at people who cross outside of crosswalks as county bumpkins, and pedestrians killed in the roadway tend be grimly viewed as getting what they deserve.