IT WAS hailed as a unique road safety experiment, but though the "Checkpoint Charlie" barriers made and tried out by staff and pupils at Blackburn's Shadsworth High School - now Queen's Park High - 32 years ago this week had the the town's MP, Transport Minister Barbara Castle, and top police and safety experts at their unveiling, the scheme stayed that way - unique.
Designed by science master John Burns and built by metalwork pupils, the system comprised two miniature barriers on the style of 'continental' railway crossings and were meant to be operated by pupils after training from the police.
The plan was to have one on each side of the road outside schools and for them to be lowered at the same time, stopping traffic and forming a corridor through which pupils could pass.
Motorists were to have early warning of the crossing through the operators wearing white overalls or raincoats and luminous orange jackets - of the kind 15-year-old pupil Arthur Hargreaves is seen wearing in this demonstration in Shadsworth Road for Mrs Castle and schoolmates.
The system was aimed at secondary schools as there was no provision for them to have "lollipop men" crossing patrols. And Blackburn's Chief Constable, Richard Bibby, saw "great possibilities" for it, particularly as the lads of 14 and 15 who would operate the barriers could be expected to have perhaps better agility and reactions than the school traffic wardens.
But, evidently, the official reaction to teenagers being in control of traffic was to put a stop to the notion.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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