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English school activities coming to school traffic
English School Uniform: Coming to School--Traffic
Figure 1.-- Here we see English parents just before World War II concerned about reaffic aon a major road their children had to cross. The press caption read, "Form Human Barricade cross 'Suiside Lane': Human carricades to mprotect the lives of children crossing an arterial highway though a suburb of London, Eng., are now being formed by the mother of the vchildren as a sole remedy to curb the number of serious accidents that have occurred recently. Since the English Ministry of Transport has refused to tak any actionin the matter, such as posing a slower speed limit, it is the sole practical recourse left to the parent, some of whom are shown above as the childen return from school." The photograph was dated Januarry 1, 1937. Notice the skyline. English cities were spread out ober large areas. There were few high-rise multi-story apartments. This created a problem for the Lufrwaffe. It is much more difficult to bomn low-density than a high density cities.
A factor in going to school was traffic. Most English children walked to school, especially primary-age children. This traffic was a issue for these younger children. There were accidents before cars appeared on streets, but they were relatively rare, because horses and horse-drawn carriages did not go all that fast. The power of the horses and the condition of the streets limited speed. The autmobile changed that, both because of the speed of the cars and improvement of city steets. This began to create real hazzards for children, especially after World War I when we see more cars on the street. Britain was the European country with the highest level of car ownership. Car ownership was more limited than in America, but the highest in Europe. Which meant that parents had to become concerned about their younger children walking to school or riding their bikes. Even in Britain traffic was not heavy in the major cities because cars were still not widely owned. Working-class families could not aford cars and even many middle-class families did not have them. This did not behin to change wntil after World War II when car ownership began to increase on the Continent (only Western Europe) and Britain. It is at this time that Britain began to give more attention to traffic safety.
