Originally Posted by
Roody
Wrong. The goal was to make travel faster and more convenient for motorists. Make the pedestrians and cyclists stay away from the cars so that motorists don't have to slow down and go around them. And especially, remove the legal liability for collisions from the motorists and pin legal blame on peds and cyclists.
Evidence is that these jay-walk laws were promoted and lobbied by motoring organizations like AAA, not by pedestrian and bicycling organizations.
An A&S thread had many posts on this subject and similar reports of alleged motoring organization conspiracies as well as questionable factoids, myths, and archaic tidbits that some posters believe are convincing and relevant. See:
http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...uilt-cars.html