Motorists, Pedestrians, Vintage Science-fiction, and the Right to the Street
A couple interesting pieces of writing on being a pedestrian.
First, a short history of how 'jaywalking' became a crime. Can you imagine what moving through a city or town was like when cars were that which was out of place on a street? When it was a motorist's responsibility to avoid pedestrians? From Vox Magainze, "The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
Second, an interesting piece of science-fiction that I found when looking through UW-Parkside's collection of vintage sci-fi pulp magazines. In Amazing Stories, I found this oddly relevant tale of a world where being a pedestrian is illegal. The author writes of the far future, when certain roads had actually been made illegal for pedestrian use, and where people seem to be perpetually driving just to go somewhere, anywhere. Where those who walk are seen as throwbacks to a primitive past.
David Keller's "Revolt of the Pedestrians" was written back in 1928, when automobiles were becoming more and more a part of everyday life. Right in the middle, in fact, of the campaign being waged by auto-makers against pedestrians that the Vox article describes. It begins on page 1048 (the pages were sequentially numbered between issues) of the magazine.
https://archive.org/details/AmazingStoriesVolume02Number11
One of the things that fascinates me about this is the political views that inform these feelings about cars. Wikipedia tells me that Keller is known is a conservative writer. In the present day, this kind of anti-car attitude might be seen as radically progressive. In 1928 though, it would probably have characterized as conservative, and even reactionary. A new paradigm of movement through the city was rising to replace an old one, and Keller was railing against it with his imagined world where motorists run down and kill pedestrians with impunity.
It's amazing how the same political position can mean very different things, and be related to a very different set of *other* political positions, depending on the time and place it occupies.
First, a short history of how 'jaywalking' became a crime. Can you imagine what moving through a city or town was like when cars were that which was out of place on a street? When it was a motorist's responsibility to avoid pedestrians? From Vox Magainze, "The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
Second, an interesting piece of science-fiction that I found when looking through UW-Parkside's collection of vintage sci-fi pulp magazines. In Amazing Stories, I found this oddly relevant tale of a world where being a pedestrian is illegal. The author writes of the far future, when certain roads had actually been made illegal for pedestrian use, and where people seem to be perpetually driving just to go somewhere, anywhere. Where those who walk are seen as throwbacks to a primitive past.
David Keller's "Revolt of the Pedestrians" was written back in 1928, when automobiles were becoming more and more a part of everyday life. Right in the middle, in fact, of the campaign being waged by auto-makers against pedestrians that the Vox article describes. It begins on page 1048 (the pages were sequentially numbered between issues) of the magazine.
https://archive.org/details/AmazingStoriesVolume02Number11
One of the things that fascinates me about this is the political views that inform these feelings about cars. Wikipedia tells me that Keller is known is a conservative writer. In the present day, this kind of anti-car attitude might be seen as radically progressive. In 1928 though, it would probably have characterized as conservative, and even reactionary. A new paradigm of movement through the city was rising to replace an old one, and Keller was railing against it with his imagined world where motorists run down and kill pedestrians with impunity.
It's amazing how the same political position can mean very different things, and be related to a very different set of *other* political positions, depending on the time and place it occupies.