An Irishman's Diary

THE word "jaywalk" is barely a century old, but already its origins are obscure. Brewer's Dictionarythinks it comes from the namesake bird, which, as well as being famous for chattering, is also known for the way it hops "in an undulating fashion".

Hence, perhaps, a link with pedestrians who cross streets in unpredictable ways.

Americans have an alternative explanation. They once used “jay” as slang for a country bumpkin: the sort of person who, when he came to the city, disregarded traffic signals and crossed streets without even looking.

And in the absence of proof, we may have to take the Yanks’ word for whence the word derives. After all, not only did they invent jaywalking as a term. They also take it more seriously as a misdemeanour.

In fact, if New York senator Carl Kruger gets his way, the misdemeanour could yet acquire a whole new lease of life. Kruger’s particular concern is with pedestrians who cross city streets while distracted by mobile phones and other personal devices.

And pointing to evidence that this is increasingly a factor in road accidents, occasionally fatal ones, he thinks something should be done.

Hence his proposed legislation that would ban pedestrians from crossing streets while using an iPod, phone, or other gadget, on pain of $100 fines.

By a happy chance – for him anyway – the initiative comes just as the case of a woman called Cathy Cruz Marrero has been highlighting, in a humorous yet effective manner, the dangers of using a mobile phone while walking. Ms Cruz Marrero was strolling through a shopping mall in Pennsylvania last week, texting an acquaintance but otherwise minding her own business.

And the moment would not since have been witnessed by several million YouTube viewers, except for a water feature that lay in her path, surrounded by a foot-high wall.

Absorbed in the text, the unfortunate woman tripped across the wall and fell headfirst into the fountain.

She later emerged from it without injury, except to her dignity (and her phone, presumably).

But she was further affronted when CCTV coverage of the incident went viral on the internet, complete with a running commentary from what appears to be a group of highly-amused mall employees enjoying the footage from different camera angles and saying things like “Oh! My! God!” and “Play it again!”

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, there is no word yet for the act of crossing a public thoroughfare while under the influence of a phone. But maybe there’s no need for such a word. As we’ve seen, the term “jaywalking” already includes a potential reference to bird-like chattering, in addition to its other meanings. So it seems to have the situation well covered.

It’s interesting that another phone-related phenomenon of our times – Twitter – also takes its name from the avian world. I’ve warned before about the risks run by Twitter-addicted pedestrians. And they don’t even have to jaywalk while tweeting for it to be hazardous: the need to provide followers with constant updates about their movements makes even a footpath dangerous.

You can imagine the following, all-too-plausible, tweet-sequence: Walking into town along Grand Canal. Beautiful morning. (3 minutes ago via iPhone.) Is that a jay I see chattering above my head? What a racket. (2 minutes ago via iPhone) Have fallen down open man-hole – Help! (30 seconds ago via iPhone).

As for the idea of tweeting in the street: well, much has been said about how micro-bloggers are changing the way news is reported. Suffice to add that someone who simultaneously attempts to cross, say, Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge while updating his Twitter account runs the risk not just of reporting a news item, but becoming one.

Even so, New York’s proposed ban seems to me rather drastic. And whatever chance it has of being observed in the US, only a more education-based approach would work here.

I note that, in Britain at least, there has been a historic tendency to call pedestrian crossings after bird-life: pelicans, puffins, even toucans. But barring a dramatic development of this strategy, for the Twitter era, I fear we may have to rely on common sense evolving with the communications devices, and in the meantime on drivers being constantly wary of the potential distraction to pedestrians. That’s assuming the drivers are not themselves texting.

INCIDENTALLY, while looking up the term “jaywalk” in the Irish Times archive, I discovered that its earliest occurrence was in the 1920s, when it was used by the then Garda Commissioner, a street-savvy individual named Eoin O’Duffy.

Gen O’Duffy had not yet become famous as a Blueshirt. For the moment, his interest in maintaining order was confined to combating traffic nuisances, such as jaywalkers. And explaining the American term to his audience, he opted for Brewer’s theory of its origins, saying that careless street-crossers in the US took their name from the bird, “which struts about in a proud selfish manner with its head in the air”.

O’Duffy was proposing new legislation that would regulate the behaviour of drivers and cyclists too. As for jaywalkers, he wanted a law that would henceforth force them “to observe the signals of traffic control men”. That was in 1926. And 85 years on, the struggle continues.