Forget self-driving car anxiety: In the early days human drivers were the fear
With all the anxiety around driverless cars lately, it’s worth remembering there was a time people worried about cars exactly because they had human drivers. In fact, it was the removal of the horses—the horseless carriage—that gave some people fits.
In the 1890s, the prospect of a person driving without the aid of a second intelligence was a real concern. A horse, or team of horses, acted as a crude form of cruise control and collision aversion.
In 1896 Alfred Sennett warned, “We should not overlook the fact that the driving of a horseless carriage calls for a larger amount of attention for he has not the advantage of the intelligence of the horse in shaping his path, and it is consequently incumbent upon him to be ever watchful of the course his vehicle is taking.”
Distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents today, so maybe it wasn’t a bad point. Although he was forgetting automobiles actually had brakes, unlike a horse and cart—and they didn’t scare.
But speed was the biggest concern. A horse-drawn cart traveled between 10 and 15 miles per hour. With the advent of automobiles, people could suddenly move much faster. Such speeds meant more danger, but early limits were more prohibitive than preventative.
In England an old law dubbed the Red Flag Act required self-propelled vehicles to be led at walking pace by someone waving a red flag. In 1895, The New York Times very aptly pointed out that it served to “destroy the usefulness of a horseless carriage.” The law was written before automobiles, specifically for steam-powered locomotives (below left), but it was so broad it applied to horseless carriages when they emerged .
You didn’t need a horse anymore, but now you not only needed someone to wave a flag, but also two mechanics to boot, or you would be violating the law. The act also limited automobiles to 2MPH in the city and 4MPH in the countryside, meaning you could travel faster by bicycle.
It was an old law applied to a new technology in a way that removed the benefits it offered. In England, it served to kill the market for horseless carriages for a time. A chairman of a UK meeting on the subject was quoted in The New York Times saying, “So long as the present state of the law existed no man would invest his capital in the manufacture of horseless carriages or run the risk of being brought before a police court.”
There was a concerted effort to repeal the Red Flag Act. A man named John Henry Knight fought the law, in some cases through civil disobedience. In 1895 he built a vehicle specifically to garner police attention and in turn raise public awareness of the old law. A year later, in 1896, it was repealed and replaced with the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896, which allowed vehicles to travel between 12 and 14 miles per hour, depending on what local governments allowed. There was an “emancipation rally,” where crowds gathered and a well-known politician tore up a red flag. It is still celebrated today.
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Originally Posted by oyarde
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