Crossing streets was even hazardous for children 140 years ago, long before the invention of the automobile. The illustrated lesson below, from the first book on accident prevention written especially for children in the United States (1830), vividly describes what might happen to careless children who, in spite of warning, run across the street when carts are near.
The modern reader may well be surprised to find the tone of this lesson more severe than that used by contemporary writers of books for children. But, as Philippe Ariés has recently and convincingly shown, the child as an object to be "coddled" is a development of this century.