
Found Footage Offers a New Glimpse at 1906 San Francisco Earthquake - aaronbrethorst
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/us/san-francisco-earthquake-film.html
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bluejekyll
What I continually find neat and attractive in these old videos, specifically
the one before the earthquake, is how multiuse the roads were.

People walking in the middle of the street, carts, horses, etc. The street
hadn’t yet been given completely over to the car. We’ve swung so far away from
this now to make it illegal to jaywalk for the efficiency of cars getting
around without them needing to worry about other forms of traffic.

It’s definitly safer now, but at the cost of giving over significant portions
of our cities to cars. We put the onus on the pedestrian, cyclist, scooter, et
al, to fight for getting access back to the street, but it hasn’t always been
this way.

Edit: spelling.

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aclimatt
And there's actually a great article about this that was on HN in January --
the history of the term jaywalking:

[https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-
history](https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history)

Basically, automobiles were killing people in the streets, so manufacturers
lobbied to get people off the streets and turn them into car-only
thoroughfares, and invented a new term for their campaign -- jaywalking, where
"jay" back then used to mean "hick" or someone from the country.

~~~
talmand
There's an interesting thought in there somewhere. Something about maybe that
hick from the country wasn't as stupid as he was made out to be and people
bought into the derogatory term to their own detriment. Seems some modern era
people might consider that from time-to-time.

