Crossing Lines

Several years ago, on my first visit to Los Angeles, I heard a story from my friend Connor, himself a newcomer to the city. One morning, at a streetlight where a dozen or so office workers were waiting to cross, Connor decided to jaywalk. With hardly a car in sight, the small-town Michigander did what any animal aiming to traverse from one point to another would do: he surveyed the gap for danger, and, seeing no fast-moving two-ton metal objects in the way, crossed the road. Rather than follow him across the empty pavement, the crowd booed. Literally, audibly—loudly, even. By the time he realized what was happening, Connor was Macbeth in the river of blood—he had waded so far into this social trespass that even if he stopped now, it would be as long and unpleasant to go back as to continue forward. Even worse, turning back would mean meeting his jeering critics eye to eye. So he held his breath and pressed on, drenched in red traffic light, pretending not to hear, and reached the far bank of Santa Monica Boulevard having been struck by no vehicles, only shame.

How one behaves at a traffic intersection reveals a lot about their personality and background. There are the rigid signal-followers, who await their turn even when the road remains empty for many minutes. There are the rebellious striders, who lean forward with eyes darting from side to side before boldly and confidently crossing, one foot already off the curb, ready to march forward as soon as the last car speeds by. And then there are the hive-minders, face half in phone, who pay little mind to neither signal nor traffic and simply walk when they feel the crowd and its associated safety surge forward into the street. Some accept inconvenience as a necessary constraint, while others are loath to give up their right to take up space. These archetypes reveal themselves most clearly when they walk together in a group: half the people think nothing of crossing at a red light, only to turn and find that they have to wait for their more timid companions to cross at the properly signaled moment.

Different cities have different standards for jaywalking. In Manhattan, everyone does it but the tourists; you are, indeed, walkin’ hyah. In Shanghai, it’s grudgingly expected; you can stop traffic mid-block with a confident wave of your hand. In LA, it was criminal until 2023 —even on an empty street—and remains socially reprehensible. In Berlin, it’s unthinkable. Context also matters. If I am walking with someone I want to impress or someone I don’t know well, I’m more likely to wait, to demonstrate concern for their safety and responsible citizenhood. If I’m with someone who I know to be capable and impatient, I’m more likely to jaywalk. If I’m really in a serious hurry, I might even jaywalk when there are cars around, with a little perfunctory jog for the last ten feet and an apologetic wave. As with any part of culture, there is a decorum to these things. As a pedestrian, failure to follow proper intersection etiquette can result in embarrassment, public disgrace, harassment by an angry driver, or even physical injury.

Questions of acceptable conduct in the public right-of-way were the very thing that gave rise to the term “jay walking” in a rapidly urbanizing, rapidly automobilizing early-20th century America. In the nineteen-aughts, the word “jay” was a commonly understood slang term approximately meaning something like “country bumpkins”—newcomers to the city, immigrants from other countries or nearby rural areas who were considered coarse and uneducated by urbane city dwellers. “Jay walking” portrayed their acts of mobility as ignorant, untaught, and uncivil. Before “jay walking,” there was even a “jay driving” to refer to those who, unfamiliar with traffic rules, drove recklessly or on the wrong side of the street. But “jaywalking” was the term that stuck, in part thanks to the efforts of the nascent automobile lobby, which was eager to shift blame for the growing problem of deadly collisions onto pedestrians. The implication became that, in a contest between a motor coach going one way and a pair of feet going perpendicular, the feet are in the wrong unless expressly given permission to be right, as by an officially marked crossing or a “walk” signal.

If one is studious about these regulations, a bit of rebellious fun can be had at the expense of drivers. I get an inordinate amount of satisfaction from stepping out onto an unsignaled crosswalk as a car approaches and turning to make eye contact with the driver. As if to say: “Look, these zebra stripes clearly indicate that I have the right of way, but you almost weren’t going to yield, were you? Who’s the country bumpkin now?” I would not recommend this to inexperienced jaywalkers, however. Playing a game of traffic chicken against someone behind the wheel of a deadly weapon carries risks that one undertakes at their own peril.

Roadways are generally publicly owned land, and as with all things shared, people have differing opinions on what is appropriate versus transgressive behavior. Zoning guidelines and the Department of Transportation might have concise definitions for “public right-of-way,” but don’t let them fool you. It takes more than a dictionary to define what the “public” consists of; who has “right”, and who is in the way.

Since at least 2014, protesters for Black Lives Matter and other causes have frequently chanted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The chant is the affirmation of a collective right to public space against the encroachments of abusive police departments and hand-wringing business owners. From that perspective, obstructing traffic for protest is an appropriate use of public streets. Architect and urbanist Charles Moore pointed out as early as the 1960s that motorways are some of the only large civic spaces available in American cities. Others, including some of the motorists inconvenienced by road blockages, consider these disruptions to be rude and transgressive. In many cases, the marches are planned so that the police are there to protect the protesters’ right-of-way for a set amount of time. Now, shouting slogans in the street alongside thousands of zealous, hoarse strangers is not the same as staring down a driver at a crosswalk, but there is an undeniably similar thrill—the empowerment of standing in the middle of the road knowing your right to be there is protected.

Not everyone accepts the idea of the street as a public forum, and those driving a car wield disproportionate power to seize the space for themselves. In 2017, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. killed one person and injured an additional thirty-five by driving through a crowd protesting against a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rather than identify automobile violence as the structural issue, authorities responded by shifting responsibility onto the people—the “jays,” in a sense—who dared trespass on spaces reserved for those piloting gasoline-powered battering rams. According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, twelve states have enacted new restrictions on traffic obstruction since January 2017, and there are nineteen federal and state bills currently being considered that would threaten traffic-blocking protesters with increased fines, jail time, lawsuits, and even deportation. Suddenly getting booed doesn’t seem so bad.

Who is allowed to take up space—specifically, the long, paved spaces between buildings that make up so much of our cities? As with all customs, this is something we decide collectively as a society, whether by habit or by law. It seems to me that public streets ought to belong equally to the people, regardless of whether their means of conveyance is biological or mechanical. After all, there is no such thing as drivers or pedestrians, only humans—some who, at a given moment, are operating a large mechanized mobility device, and some not. The use of a car does come with peculiar benefits—speed, convenience, mass, durability. Is it not reasonable, then, to associate getting behind a wheel with proportionate responsibility to maintain the safety and freedom of those sharing the same space who happen to be less equipped?

A few mornings ago in New Haven, I decided to drive. There I was running late, on a busy four-lane street, with the light having just turned green. And in front of me were two teenagers still ambling diagonally across the middle of the intersection. An egregious level of shameless disregard, even to an avid jaywalker like myself. As they finally reached the curb, one of them looked me in the eyes and made a heart with his hands. What could I do but smile and shake my head? There were no jays in that moment—just two people walking in the street, and one person in a car waiting to cross.