Don't jay walk 1937 WPA Postcard

Watch your step." 1937 WPA poster warning pedestrians not to jaywalk. The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western populations. Expenditures from 1936 to 1939 totalled nearly $7 billion. A public service announcement (PSA) or community service announcement (CSA) is an advertisement broadcast on radio or television, for the public interest. PSAs are intended to modify public attitudes by raising awareness about specific issues. The most common topics of PSAs are health and safety. A typical PSA is part of a public awareness campaign to inform or educate the public about an issue such as smoking or compulsive gambling. Contrary to popular belief, political campaign advertisements are not PSAs. Public service advertising campaigns are widespread around the world. Such advertising is generally produced and distributed on a cooperative basis by governmental agencies or nonprofit organisations acting in concert with private advertising and mass media companies. In most cases, the nonprofit provides the programming that is to be advertised, while the participating advertising agency and media companies provide creative services, media planning, and dissemination services on a pro bono basis. Often, a charitable organisation releasing a PSA enlists the support of a celebrity; examples include Michael J. Fox's PSAs in the U.S. supporting research into Parkinson's Disease and Crips street gang leader Stanley "Tookie" Williams speaking from prison to urge youth not to join gangs. Jaywalking is an informal term commonly used in the USA to refer to illegal or reckless pedestrian crossing of a roadway. Examples include a pedestrian crossing between intersections (outside a crosswalk, marked or unmarked) without yielding to drivers and starting to cross a crosswalk at a signalised intersection without waiting for a permissive indication to be displayed. In the United States, state statutes generally reflect the Uniform Vehicle Code in requiring drivers to yield the right of way to pedestrians at crosswalks; at other locations, crossing pedestrians are either required to yield to drivers or, under some conditions, are prohibited from crossing. The United Kingdom does not formally describe priority regulations for drivers and pedestrians at road junctions or other locations, except with respect to marked Zebra, Pelican, and Puffin crossings, where pedestrians have "precedence" under defined conditions. Elsewhere, the Highway Code relies on the expectation that pedestrians in the process of crossing at (unmarked) road junctions have priority, as a matter of common law. According to one historian, the earliest known use of the word jaywalker in print was in the Chicago Tribune in 1909. (The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1917.) The term's dissemination was due in part to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.