Poster · United Kingdom · 1939–1946 · World War II
Lookout in the Blackout. Think before you cross the road
In the first months of the Second World War, it wasn't bombs that killed Britons. It was dark streets.
- Artist
- Pat Keely
- Series
- Lookout in the Blackout
- Themes
Two sketches, one slogan: “Lookout in the Blackout. Think before you cross the road.” The first shows an eye in the dark and an arrow marked RIGHT: Britain drives on the left, so you look right first. The second is a raised “stop” hand holding an ambulance and a falling pedestrian. The blackout hid cities from bombers, but streets without lamps and cars with masked headlights became a trap. In September 1939, the first month of the blackout, 1,130 people were killed on Britain's roads — twice as many as a year earlier.
Semper Idem · today’s parallel
In autumn 2022 Ukraine got blackouts of its own, after Russian strikes on the power grid. Streets without lights or traffic signals — and the same arithmetic. Britain, late 1939: seven in ten road deaths happened during blackout hours. Ukraine, October 2022: almost three in four pedestrians killed died in the dark. And the police, like Keely's posters before them, turned to pedestrians: wear a reflector.
Ukraine's outage season is close. Got a reflector yet?
Context
United Kingdom, Second World War (The National Archives dates it 1939–1946). Artist: Patrick Cokayne (Pat) Keely (1901–1970), who designed posters for London Transport and Southern Railway. Two original sketches from the Ministry of Information's “Lookout in the Blackout” series on safety in the blackout: an eye with an arrow marked RIGHT, and a “stop” hand holding an ambulance and a falling pedestrian.
The blackout was introduced when the war began in September 1939, to make night raids harder. Switched-off street lights and masked headlights sent road deaths soaring: 1,130 people were killed in September 1939, against 544 a year earlier; in October–December, seven in ten deaths happened during blackout hours.
