Not sure what the relevance of TBE is to crossing the road.

The Empire infact included a number of countries which are not in The Commonwealth so it had an even larger footprint

Israel ( Palestine ) , Egypt , Sudan , Yemen ( south anyway ) Jordan , Iraq , Kuwait, Eire, United States, Burma ( Myanmar ) , Nepal , Bhutan . Hong Kong.

Apologies for those left out.

Of course bad things happened in The Empire but also many good things as well , although not sure about crossing the road.