Jaywalking

The offense of a pedestrian crossing a roadway outside a designated crosswalk or against a traffic signal, in violation of a jaywalking or pedestrian-crossing ordinance. The term originated in the United States in the early twentieth century, during a period documented by transportation historians in which the automobile industry and allied civic groups actively promoted the idea that streets belonged primarily to motor vehicles rather than to pedestrians, helping to popularize jaywalking laws that shifted the legal responsibility for street-crossing safety onto the pedestrian. Enforcement and even the underlying legal status of jaywalking vary considerably by jurisdiction: it remains a punishable infraction, typically carrying a modest fine, in most of the United States, while a number of American cities and states, including California, Virginia and Nevada, decriminalized or substantially narrowed jaywalking enforcement in the early 2020s following documented concern that enforcement fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic pedestrians.