The crosswalk originated from the ancient Roman era of skipping stones. As early as in the ancient Roman period of Pompeii, some streets, cars and horses and pedestrians cross, often make the city traffic jams, but also continue to have accidents. For this reason, people will be separated from the sidewalk and carriageway, and the sidewalk raised, but also near the intersection of the road where a piece of stone protruding from the road - jumping stone, as a sign indicating that pedestrians crossing the street.
Toward the end of the 19th century, with the invention of the automobile, the city is more rolling traffic, coupled with people crossing the street at will, impeding traffic, the former kind of skipping stones have been unable to avoid traffic accidents occur frequently.
In the early 1950s, the British designed a cross-grid crosswalk line on the street, the pedestrian crossing the street, can only take the crosswalk, so the streets of London appeared in a way Herren eye-catching crosswalks, look at these crosswalks like a zebra on the body of the white stripe, and therefore people call it crosswalk. Drivers will automatically slow down or stop when they see these white lines, allowing pedestrians to pass safely. Crosswalk is still everywhere on the street.