The auto lobby devised two counterpoints to the memorials and protests: education and enforcement—laws that governed who was allowed in the street and lessons to indoctrinate the public to these new rules. While some of the financial benefactors of car sales pushed municipalities to pass local traffic ordinances restricting pedestrians’ access to the street, the American Automobile Association in particular focused on education, launching and funding a national traffic safety campaign in schools. Street crossing lessons became part of the curriculum, and those lessons reinforced the idea that now cars go first and pedestrians wait. Inherent in this education was the message that if a person did not wait and a driver killed them in the street, their death was caused not by the car’s speed but by jaywalking—the pedestrian’s error. The goal was to teach the next generation that the roads are for automobiles, not people. And since cars were new, and pedestrians had long ruled city streets, someone had to invent the idea that a person could walk improperly—the auto lobby did just that.
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