Folk law | Look before you leap

Baron Hore-Belisha’s brush with death on the highway led to a change in the law that is still with us today '¨

The zebra crossing is 61-years-old this month. On 31 October 1951, statutory regulations for zebra crossings were introduced but the earlier road safety innovation of lamp posts topped with flashing yellow globes, known as Belisha Beacons, is attributed to their namesake, Plymouth born Leslie Hore-Belisha (1st Baron Hore-Belisha, of Devonport in the County of Devon) who was Minister of Transport from 29 June 1934 to 28 May 1937. Up to this time there was a serious increase of accidents to pedestrians and over 3,000 were killed in 1934 – described by the minister as “mass murder”.

No speed limit

The 1930s marked the beginning of the age of mass motorization – elegant convertibles graced our streets and less luxurious vehicles were becoming more affordable and available to the masses. At this time, the speed limit was seen as a “removal of an Englishman’s freedom of the highway” and although speed restrictions had been '¨in existence since 1861 (See ‘Hold your horses’ 156/20, 22 May 2012), His Majesty’s Government inexplicably brought about abolition in 1930 as it believed that the public would be amply protected '¨by prosecutions for driving to the danger of the public rather than by penalising speeding motorists.

The Road Traffic Act 1930 abolished the universally flouted speed limit but the statute was crafted to achieve this in an understated way. Rather than an universal ban, it discriminated in favour of the motor car: section two defined the various classes of motor vehicles and section ten made it unlawful: “for any person to drive a motor vehicle of any class or description on a road at a speed greater than the speed specified in the First Schedule to this Act as the maximum speed in relation to a vehicle of that class or description, and if any person acts in contravention of this section he shall be guilty of an offence.” The First Schedule contained speed limits for every single motor vehicle on the road (including goods vehicles, motor tractors and trailers), with one exception, “vehicles constructed solely for the carriage of passengers and their effects”, in other words, motor cars!

Near fatality

Shortly after his appointment as Minister of Transport, Hore-Belisha was crossing Camden High Street when a speeding sports car nearly knocked him over at a crossing. His escape from ‘serious injury or worse’ led to a public safety programme to demonstrate the importance of uncontrolled road crossings and the introduction of the Belisha Beacon.

Hore-Belisha passed a new Road Traffic Act that reinstated speed restrictions for motor cars and imposed a 30 miles per hour limit in built-up areas (by 18 March 1935). Section 1 of the Road Traffic Act 1934 obliged local authorities to display traffic signs to indicate to motorists the beginning and end of a length of road subject to the 30 miles per hour limit but many local authorities were unable to do this before the deadline of 18 March 1935. Those who supported ‘an Englishman’s freedom on the highway’ exploited the situation.
On 13 March 1935, the Minister for Transport was asked by Members of the House of Commons whether he would give an undertaking not to bring in the speed limit if proof could be offered up by the Royal Automobile Club that none of the signs had been erected. Hore-Belisha, the guardian angel of the pedestrian, did not countenance the suggestion and pressed on with a rewrite of the Highway Code.

When Hore-Belisha retired, he was made vice-president of the Pedestrians’ Association (which to this day displays the Belisha Beacon as its logo). He was succeeded at the ministry by Mr Edward Burgin (Minister for Transport 1938 - 1939), who, like his predecessor, saw the merit of flashing lights in road safety. He authorised the experimental use of a flashing school sign in Exeter and sanctioned further similar experiments in the area of the London County Council where a sign bearing the words “Beware of school children in streets,” was exhibited when the children were arriving or leaving.

By the late 1940s, it was felt that Belisha Beacons alone could not adequately protect pedestrians, which led to experimentation with painted road stripes. The combination of the zebra crossing with Belisha Beacons in 1951 marked a new era in road safety that has not changed significantly in sixty years, though the original glass globes were replaced with plastic ones to stop unruly children smashing them with stones and we now see cyclists zigzagging between pedestrians in rush hour!