We were all taught how to cross a street: Look both ways. But, in some cities, you’ll also have to ask permission by pressing a tiny button and waiting your turn. Those little buttons on walk signals have been nicknamed "beg buttons"—because walkers are pretty much begging to be able to cross.
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Before the invention of the car, jaywalking wasn’t a recognized concept. Want to get across the street? Then just walk across the street—nobody’s going to stop you. But the rise of the automobile posed a new problem for people of the early 20th century. While the median state-designated speed limit for American cities was just 10 miles per hour in 1906, the pace of American streets soon increased enough that people who wanted to cross them were suddenly putting themselves in harm’s way. So cities across the U.S. started to regulate where and when pedestrians could cross. You can see the faint pedestrian crosswalk lines painted on the street in the scene below from Detroit circa 1917.
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