CROSSING THE ROAD IN BRITAIN, 1931–1976 JOE MORAN Liverpool John Moores University ABSTRACT. This article explores the history of crossing the road in Britain from the traffic acts of the early 1930s to the introduction of the Green Cross Code in the early 1970s. It reconstructs this history through the examination of government documents, press releases, newspaper articles, newsreels, public information films, and other road safety materials. Since the interwar period, British governments have become pro- gressively more involved in policing the activity of crossing the road, and there have been two main planks of policy. The first has been to design progressively more sophisticated crossings ; the second has been road safety education, including advice about how to use the crossings, disseminated through school crossing patrols, children’s clubs, and public information films. Governments have generally relied on appeals to good sense and civic duty rather than legally enforceable rules about crossing the road, and have sought to follow as well as lead public opinion in determining how much to coerce both pedestrians and motorists. The formulation of policy in relation to public attitudes and media responses means that crossing the road during this period has interesting implications for both political and cultural history. This article traces the political and cultural history of a mundane practice of British daily life : crossing the road. The forty-five-year period under consider- ation was marked by the introduction of pedestrian crossings and subsequent experimentation about their design and operation ; and a vigorous programme in the education of pedestrians, particularly children, to get them to use these crossings correctly and to cross the road at other points safely. At the same time, crossing the road emerged intermittently as the subject of public controversy and even protest, partly in response to these government interventions, and policy often sought to monitor and respond to these anxieties. In this sense, it followed a historical pattern in British motoring law of seeking to reconcile the competing aims of different interest groups, and working within the constraints of what was deemed acceptable to public opinion. 1 Governments have often appealed to good sense and civic duty rather than the threat of punishment, in response to public fears about the excessive coercion of pedestrians or motorists. One consequence is that there are few legal constraints School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, Liverpool John Moores University, Dean Walters Building, St James Road, Liverpool, L1 7BR J.Moran@ljmu.ac.uk 1 Alan Irwin, Risk and the control of technology: public policies for road traffic safety in Britain and the United States (Manchester, 1985), p. 88; William Plowden, The motor car and politics in Britain (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 342. The Historical Journal, 49, 2 (2006), pp. 477–496 f 2006 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0018246X06005292 Printed in the United Kingdom 477