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Crossing guard
A crossing guard (North American English), lollipop woman/man/lady/person (British, Irish, and Australian English), or school road patrol (New Zealand English) is a traffic management personnel who is normally stationed on busy roadways to aid pedestrians. Often associated with school children, crossing guards stop the flow of traffic so pedestrians may cross an intersection.
Crossing guards are known by a variety of names, the most widely used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia being "lollipop lady/woman/man/person", a reference to the large signs used that resemble lollipops. The verb is lollipopping, which can also be used for road works.
In Australia and the United Kingdom, a school crossing supervisor or school crossing patrol officer is commonly known as a lollipop woman, lollipop man, lollipop lady, or lollipop person because of the modified circular stop sign they carry, which resembles a large lollipop. The term was coined in the 1960s when road safety awareness programs were rolled out in schools throughout the UK and the crossing patrols were introduced by the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1967.
Ventriloquist John Bouchier visited schools nationwide with his ventriloquist dummy to help make children more aware of road safety. During these visits[when?] John's main character, a young boy named Charlie, referred to crossing patrol officers as "Lollipop men" for the first time.[citation needed] The term became widely used very quickly and has crossed into popular culture, both in the folk world (the common morris-dance tune "The Lollipop Man" has lewd lyrics in one tradition), and in the pop world (see the song by the band Sweet).
Research in the UK has revealed that crossing guards ('lollipoppers') are seen as the safest school crossing option by parents and children, with nine out of ten (92 per cent) believing that every school should have one.
In Australia, school crossing supervisors are employed by state government transport authorities and are posted at crossing sites by government officers. The exceptions to this rule are Victoria, where local councils employ crossing supervisors through their local laws department and Western Australia, where supervisors are known alternatively as police traffic wardens, and are employed by the traffic management unit of the WA Police. Supervisors in WA use handheld neon stop-flags instead of the traditional lollipop.
Under UK law it is an offence for a motorist not to stop if signalled to do so by a patroller. In the past, patrollers only had the authority to stop the traffic for children. The Transport Act 2000 changed the law so that a patroller had the authority to stop the traffic for any pedestrian.
In the UK, the stop sign has the word "STOP", a horizontal strip of black, and an international symbol for children (the symbol is sometimes replaced with the written word "CHILDREN"). The design is based upon the Vienna Convention international standard roadsign for "passing without stopping prohibited". The patrollers are employed by local authorities, but there is a greater degree of standardization of the system across the country than in the US.[citation needed] They are often older people who have retired from full-time employment. They may be based at a pelican crossing, a zebra crossing, or just an ordinary point on the road widely used as a crossing.
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Crossing guard AI simulator
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Crossing guard
A crossing guard (North American English), lollipop woman/man/lady/person (British, Irish, and Australian English), or school road patrol (New Zealand English) is a traffic management personnel who is normally stationed on busy roadways to aid pedestrians. Often associated with school children, crossing guards stop the flow of traffic so pedestrians may cross an intersection.
Crossing guards are known by a variety of names, the most widely used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia being "lollipop lady/woman/man/person", a reference to the large signs used that resemble lollipops. The verb is lollipopping, which can also be used for road works.
In Australia and the United Kingdom, a school crossing supervisor or school crossing patrol officer is commonly known as a lollipop woman, lollipop man, lollipop lady, or lollipop person because of the modified circular stop sign they carry, which resembles a large lollipop. The term was coined in the 1960s when road safety awareness programs were rolled out in schools throughout the UK and the crossing patrols were introduced by the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1967.
Ventriloquist John Bouchier visited schools nationwide with his ventriloquist dummy to help make children more aware of road safety. During these visits[when?] John's main character, a young boy named Charlie, referred to crossing patrol officers as "Lollipop men" for the first time.[citation needed] The term became widely used very quickly and has crossed into popular culture, both in the folk world (the common morris-dance tune "The Lollipop Man" has lewd lyrics in one tradition), and in the pop world (see the song by the band Sweet).
Research in the UK has revealed that crossing guards ('lollipoppers') are seen as the safest school crossing option by parents and children, with nine out of ten (92 per cent) believing that every school should have one.
In Australia, school crossing supervisors are employed by state government transport authorities and are posted at crossing sites by government officers. The exceptions to this rule are Victoria, where local councils employ crossing supervisors through their local laws department and Western Australia, where supervisors are known alternatively as police traffic wardens, and are employed by the traffic management unit of the WA Police. Supervisors in WA use handheld neon stop-flags instead of the traditional lollipop.
Under UK law it is an offence for a motorist not to stop if signalled to do so by a patroller. In the past, patrollers only had the authority to stop the traffic for children. The Transport Act 2000 changed the law so that a patroller had the authority to stop the traffic for any pedestrian.
In the UK, the stop sign has the word "STOP", a horizontal strip of black, and an international symbol for children (the symbol is sometimes replaced with the written word "CHILDREN"). The design is based upon the Vienna Convention international standard roadsign for "passing without stopping prohibited". The patrollers are employed by local authorities, but there is a greater degree of standardization of the system across the country than in the US.[citation needed] They are often older people who have retired from full-time employment. They may be based at a pelican crossing, a zebra crossing, or just an ordinary point on the road widely used as a crossing.