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Zebra crossings

Vivienne14

Kentish Brummie Moderator
Staff member
Somehow I imagined zebra crossings to have been around a long, long time. But no, it took until 1939 to get around to painting the stripes on the road for use as crossings. And even then they were yellow, so not quite zebras.

It was planned that the painted lines of the crossings would be allowed to wear out. Presumably because most people would have become ‘crossing conscious’ by then and have got the hang of crossing the road !

It looks to me that Belisha beacons pre-date the painting of striped crossings too.

Viv.


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Saves money and having to make connections to the electricity system, Mike, but not so visible at night. Plain crossings, as they all are here, tend to get ignored by at least half the road users, and motorists will rarely give way to pedestrians.

Maurice
 
Pedestrian crossings were introduced under the Road Traffic Act 1934, Leslie Hoare-Belisha was the minister of Transport at the time, hence the beacon's name.

It is alleged that the 'zebra' bit came from a remark by James Callaghan when he saw experimental stripes at the Transport Research Laboratory in 1948.
 
Did not know that...……...Thank you!
But did you know about the 'secret button' on some crossings? (Not really a button but an indicator).

Before that blind people needed to keep some dog biscuits in their coat pockets:

A pedestrian was horrified to see a guide dog haul its owner across a crossing, despite the busy traffic and the 'red man' still showing. The sound of screeching tyres and hooting horns must have alerted the blind man to what had happened, but despite that he calmly put his hand in his pocket and handed a biscuit to the dog. "Why are you rewarding your dog, he nearly killed you?", said the pedestrian. "I need to check which end to kick", said the blind man.
 
But did you know about the 'secret button' on some crossings? (Not really a button but an indicator).

Before that blind people needed to keep some dog biscuits in their coat pockets:

A pedestrian was horrified to see a guide dog haul its owner across a crossing, despite the busy traffic and the 'red man' still showing. The sound of screeching tyres and hooting horns must have alerted the blind man to what had happened, but despite that he calmly put his hand in his pocket and handed a biscuit to the dog. "Why are you rewarding your dog, he nearly killed you?", said the pedestrian. "I need to check which end to kick", said the blind man.
Did not know that either...……….
 
"A pedestrian was horrified to see a guide dog haul its owner across a crossing, despite the busy traffic and the 'red man' still showing. The sound of screeching tyres and hooting horns must have alerted the blind man to what had happened, but despite that he calmly put his hand in his pocket and handed a biscuit to the dog. "Why are you rewarding your dog, he nearly killed you?", said the pedestrian. "I need to check which end to kick", said the blind man."

Maybe the blind man was in the habit of kicking his dog and the dog knew exactly what he was doing when he dragged his master into the traffic.:)
 
The predecessor of the zebra crossing seems to be the Belisha Crossing. This goes back to February 1935. I don’t think these would have had Belisha Beacons (lights) at that time, but later newspaper reports tell us they did have lighting by 1936. Viv.
 

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So it seems the Belisha beacon came into use around 1934 according to this Wikipedia extract:

“The beacons were named after Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893–1957), the Minister of Transport who in 1934 added beacons to pedestrian crossings, marked by large metal studs in the road surface. These crossings were later painted in black and white stripes, thus are known as zebra crossings”.

Presumably Belisha Crossing mentioned in post #17 refers to the metal studded crossings, pre-beaconed.

Viv.
 
This might correct one or two Wiki errors in other posts.
 
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