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"At the kerb, halt! Look right, look left, look right again. If all clear
quick march!" The 'kerb drill', as it became known, was instituted by the
National 'Safety First' Association (later the Royal Society for the Prevention
of Accidents) in 1942, and clearly betrays it war origins. It served young
British citizens for 29 years until it was replaced by the Green Cross Code.
To ensure that the new Code was understood rather than just learnt by rote -
a common criticism of the 'kerb drill' - the government ran a three-month
saturation publicity campaign comprising mobile safety exhibitions, films,
posters and leaflets at a cost of around £500,000. At the end of the three
months John Peyton, Minister for Transport Industries, announced that the number
of children killed or seriously injured had dropped by 7 per cent compared with
the previous year, but six months later the rate was as high as before. Several
analyses of the campaign demonstrated that road safety messages need to be
constantly relayed in order to be effective. Mindful of these findings, the
Central Office of Information produced an unprecedented number of TV fillers to
communicate the Green Cross Code to children. It remains the most comprehensive
child safety campaign undertaken to date and is still in use today.
To bring the Code to life, British actor and former Mr Universe David Prowse
was teleported to the kerbside in the guise of superhero the Green Cross Code
Man to assist careless children. Known simply as 'Green Cross' he remained the
archangel of road safety for 14 years, visiting thousands of schools to promote
the cause. In 1977 he famously swapped green spandex for the black mantle of
Star Wars' arch villain, Darth Vadar. As it was in the three Star Wars films,
Bristol-born Prowse's West Country accent was dubbed out of the first two Green
Cross Code editions (perhaps not superhero-sounding enough?), but his dulcet
lilt is unmistakable in the third. Updates to the Green Cross Code filler
campaign include the introduction of the famously impenetrable acronym SPLINK,
and, in the 1980s Green Cross's R2D2-style robotic sidekick. While the Code has
undergone several changes over the years, the basic tenets - "Stop, Look,
Listen, Think" or "Stop, Look, Listen, Live" - have endured.
Katy McGahan
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Complete film (0:33)
