Comment by aspenmayer

I think we're ignoring the wider context of this thread, which would be the context of TFA, which is New York City specifically. The roads in NYC predate the existence of the automobile. NYC had a bicycle boom in the late 1800s.

https://www.nytimes.com/1869/03/08/archives/velocipedes-thei... | https://archive.is/UDhZf

Bike cops in NYC in the late 1800s were likely more common than cars.

https://flatironnomad.nyc/history/brief-history-of-bicycling... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250713044710/https://flatironn...

> In 1896, then New York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt launched the first-ever group of bicycle-riding officers. This team evolved into a 100-member organization with its own station stated Evan Friss, co-curator of the Museum of the City of New York’s 2019 exhibit Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History[0].

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250319112028/https://www.mcny....

By the time this film was created in 1911, cars existed, but they had to share the road with pedestrians, cable cars, and horse carriages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx5sUa_2SD8

> This documentary travelogue of New York City in 1911 was made by a team of cameramen with the Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern, who were sent around the world to make pictures of well-known places.

> Opening and closing with shots of the Statue of Liberty, the film also includes New York Harbor; Battery Park and the John Ericsson statue; the elevated railways at Bowery and Worth Streets; Broadway sights like Grace Church and Mark Cross; the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue; and Madison Avenue. Produced only three years before the outbreak of World War I, the everyday life of the city recorded here—street traffic, people going about their business—has a casual, almost pastoral quality that differs from the modernist perspective of later city-symphony films like Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s "Manhatta" (1921). Take note of the surprising and remarkably timeless expression of boredom exhibited by a young girl filmed as she was chauffeured along Broadway in the front seat of a convertible limousine.

Jaywalking wasn't even really a concept until ~1915. It's legal again in NYC as of last year. Jaywalking laws against pedestrians and other non-drivers could be viewed as a taking from or enclosure of the commons; in this case, roads as public thoroughfares for one and all. In this light, the behavior of drivers towards cyclists is a continuation of their hostility towards horse carriage users and pedestrians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking

https://www.cnn.com/travel/jaywalking-legalized-new-york-cit... | https://archive.is/Y2MCk

Folks have been cycling in NYC long before cars were common. Before that, folks were using the roads for all manner of pursuits. Roads are tools for living, and they're for everyone who needs them if a better option more suited for your mode of transportation isn't available.