I have long been a serial jaywalker – and I am proud of it

One day on a walk during a visit to Vienna, I approached an intersection filled with pedestrians awaiting the light.

I looked both ways, shrugged and began crossing the street. An elderly woman began screaming at me in German, something about traffic and rules and order. I shrugged again, smiled at her and said aloud, “Ich bin kein guter Deutscher”, I am not a good German, no robotic follower of rules, especially when it comes to being a pedestrian.

In fact, I have long been a serial jaywalker. And I am proud of it. I blithely cross the street whenever there’s an opportunity, regardless of whether there’s a crosswalk. I wade out into slowly moving traffic, making my way past the lanes, sashaying between automobiles driven by consternated drivers.

In chaotic places like Cairo or Tehran, there is no other way to get across the street. But even in well-managed Western cities like Paris, when I go on runs through the city, I dash across streets past oncoming motorcycles and cars.

And even – no, especially – when there is no traffic, I avoid the constrictions of pavements or sidewalks for the liberty of the open road. Some people tell me that I set a bad example for children with my systematic jaywalking. In fact, I actually am indoctrinating my own child on the joys of crossing against the light.

I explain to my kid that once upon a time there was no such thing as jaywalking; that automobiles, pedestrians, streetcars and beasts of burden shared the roads, along with vendors hawking food and fruit. Drivers of private vehicles were interlopers, and it was their job to avoid hitting pedestrians.

But then the automobile industry in the 1920s began to lobby governments to stigmatise and penalise jaywalking, shifting the responsibility for avoiding collisions onto the pedestrians. It was all a way to make driving more efficient and thereby sell more cars.

I tell myself that I jaywalk as an act of political defiance, to reclaim public space from the tyranny of the automobile industry. But I may be deluding myself. I may just like flagrantly breaking the rules every now and then.

Yours,

Borzou Daragahi

International correspondent