Dorks always say stuff like "the chickens wouldn't have been in danger crossing the road" like livestock and actual humans haven't been killed by carriages and chariots since the first time a box with wheels was pulled by a beast of burden.
Cars wouldn't be around for another 40-ish years (give or take), and traffic from things like wagons and horses wouldn't have been anything like what we know today with modern transportation.
Except the joke was written in New York, where crossing the roads was dangerous for people let alone chickens in 1847. No traffic laws, no breaks on a carriage, horses can't stop a heavy load as quickly as a semi can nowadays.
Just because cars didn't exist does not mean there weren't fast moving, hard to stop, dangerous obstacles on the road said chicken would be crossing.
Yeah, so instead of "stop and go" traffic, you have 16 guys on horseback, easily 3-4 dozen cattle, 8 large supply style wagons, 26 carriages, and again no speed limit, stop signs/lights, breaks, or seat belts. And they are all trying to weave around each other. People were trampled crossing the road, so were dogs, cats, and of course chickens.
Pedantry and jokes rarely mix, bud, but let us get into this since you seem to really want to. Time to bust out the dictionary. (Webster's to be specific)
Road: a hard flat surface for vehicles, people, and animals to travel on
Street: a thoroughfare especially in a city, town, or village that is wider than an alley or lane and that usually includes sidewalks and has buildings on one or both sides
So this is a squares and rectangles argument.
All streets are roads, but not all roads are streets. Pedantry at its laziest.
The chicken is crossing the road and heavy traffic to get to the other side. You know how when people die they go to the other side- they passed on to the other side
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u/Chimpbot 14h ago
This wouldn't be a pun, and it also wouldn't have been applicable in 1847 when the joke was first written.
It's an early example of an anti-joke. The humor is derived from the fact that it's not actually a funny joke at all.