During World War II, German bombing raids on English soil became frequent.
All the lights went out, both in the city and in the country, to avoid providing Luftwaffe pilots with useful visual references.
During these blackouts, keeping everything dark was vital, but this turned out to be a sometimes fatal problem for many drivers forced to travel at night.
In an attempt (also) to protect their precious quadrupeds, farmers painted their cattle with strips of white paint to make them more visible and avoid being run over.
The subject of night accidents became so pressing that, in 1939, the King’s Surgeon wrote that “the darkness of the blackout caused over 600 casualties a month among British citizens, without the need for the Luftwaffe to bother to fly over English skies.