Point taken. However, when new tech comes along, new laws follow in their wake.
When people moved from farm to city and suddenly we had massive amounts of worker abuse, labor laws got introduced.
Barnstorming aviation gave way to regulated aviation.
It's not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a reaction to change in the operating environment. I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc. Today streets are prescripted and need to meet various contextual requirements (volume, traffic flow, vehicle types, pedestrians, weight limit, wear characteristics, etc.)
When a car gets crushed on the tracks, it's usually not blamed on the train. It's typically thought of as the responsibility of the car driver.
Now, sure, trains are constrained by tracks and don't enjoy manoeuverability, but same with ships, the little ones get out of the way.
Cars can't stop on a dime, so we put the ones on the entity with the most manoeuverability, in this case people.
It follows urban design, in most of Europe jaywalking isn't a concept, because most urban roads are not large or fast-moving enough to justify it. Most people would not cross dual carriageways just by default, but that is a rare enough case not to require enforcement. And people carrying those ideas of pedestrian-friendly streets into the way new urban areas are designed. When urban motorways and dual-carriageways are the default, then the idea of what is normal is different, and those ideas are applied more generally to enforcement on other roads and planning new roads.
It would be interesting to see data about the existence of the crime, and its enforcement. I know about the US and Europe, not so much elsewhere.
> I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc.
It's also worthwhile to consider all that cars have added to our society. People stayed in the streets because that's as far as they could go. Vendors came to the streets because that's where their customers could get to. Travel was limited, the movement of goods was basically nonexistent compared to today and "moving for a job" was not even a possibility for the majority of Americans.
We introduced cars, then made them faster because that enabled more of what we wanted for ourselves, and sure, we made a sacrifice in that trade but I don't understand this modern trend of decrying our future for love of navel gazing through the past.
The role of technology in society is a perpetual balancing act negotiated by the actions of the people. Perhaps it isn't so much "navel gazing through the past" as recognizing that the balance has, for some, shifted too far in the direction of sacrifice.
Luckily, there are other societies that have managed to achieve most of the benefits of cars with fewer of the costs. We can learn from them as we try to find a balance that is acceptable to a broader population.
When people moved from farm to city and suddenly we had massive amounts of worker abuse, labor laws got introduced.
Barnstorming aviation gave way to regulated aviation.
It's not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a reaction to change in the operating environment. I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc. Today streets are prescripted and need to meet various contextual requirements (volume, traffic flow, vehicle types, pedestrians, weight limit, wear characteristics, etc.)
When a car gets crushed on the tracks, it's usually not blamed on the train. It's typically thought of as the responsibility of the car driver.
Now, sure, trains are constrained by tracks and don't enjoy manoeuverability, but same with ships, the little ones get out of the way.
Cars can't stop on a dime, so we put the ones on the entity with the most manoeuverability, in this case people.