The quote literally has a newspaper article from 1909 talking about jay walkers. Jaywalking may have been boosted by the auto industry but it wasn’t invented by them.

Your own source disproves your post title

Wikipedia

While jaywalking is associated with pedestrians today, the earliest references to “jay” behavior in the street were about horse-drawn carriages and automobiles in 1905 Kansas: “jay drivers” who did not drive on the correct side of the street.[1] The term swiftly expanded to pedestrians, and by 1909, The Chanute Daily Tribune warned “The jay walker needs attention as well as the jay driver, and is about as big a nuisance.”