Panda crossing

In the early-1960s, the British Ministry of Transport, headed by Ernest Marples, was looking for a way to make pedestrian crossings safer under increasingly heavy traffic conditions.

Some cities had innovated with their own one-off crossings but the lack of standardisation was considered a safety issue.

[2] The layout was superficially similar to a traditional zebra crossing, with a painted area on the road announced by Belisha beacons.

The system allowed for a pause between crossings in order to avoid traffic delays, and so the pedestrian might wait a while before anything happened.

The light sequence also prevented long delays by allowing traffic to move after a few seconds if nobody was crossing.

Although the original version of the X-way was also short-lived, it survived with minor modifications to become the more successful pelican crossing, which was introduced in 1969[5] and remains in widespread use today.