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@clubman
My post today in the Pre 1950's thread in Bikes and Bits is relevant to this problem (4569).
It seems clear that it's a general problem and not limited to one or two brands. Some one above in this column mentions keeping the bike clean and speaking as some one who has found a crack in a Campag crank when cleaning, I agree with this. Clearly pedal washers are a good precaution - I remember that TA always supplied them with new cranks. Does this not happen now?
Old style steel cottered cranks do break very occasionally but it was much less of a problem.
There was one type of Raleigh crank used on some of their 'RRA' bikes which did have a reputation for failing and I have once seen a broken Chater Lea crank, but this was shown to me by a bike shop owner who clearly thought it was a very odd occurence. I've never seen any other broken steel cranks.
If you look at photos of continental racing from the 50's, it's striking that the pros were not quick to adopt cotterless - I guess this was because they preferred reliability to something they didn't trust.
I have got a couple of bikes with cotterless, but nearly all my riding nowadays is done on steel cottered cranks - I'm not trying to go fast, so I'm not bothered by a little extra weight.