Red Lights in the Rearview
A quick (but not too quick) history of speeding in America
You’re zipping along the road without a care. The sun is shining, the windows are down, the sound system is cranked. You’re belting out a little mid-80’s Duran Duran (well, at least, I am), impressed with how well you can still hit the high notes along with Simon Le Bon, when you glance in the rearview mirror.
Shit. It’s not, is it? Dark color. Flat bar across the top. Government plate. Shit. You flick your eyes down to the speedometer. Shit, shit, shit.
Tiny beads of sweat form at your temples. A softball-sized lump appears in your throat. What’s the speed limit along here again? Shit!
The patrol car presses closer to your rear bumper. OK, he’s just radioing in my plate number. He’ll find out I’m not a bad driver. I mean, I haven’t had a ticket in years!
Then the lights flash on. Aw, c’mon! I lost track of my speed for, like, ten seconds! I’m a good driver! I’m not a speeder! Why me? How could this happen? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
Well, if you’ll stop shouting a moment, I’ll tell you. But to learn how we got things like speed limits and speeding tickets, we’ll need to take another quick trip — back in time and, at least for starters, across the ocean. Buckle up. We’ve got some ground to cover.
Anarchy In The UK
It seems only appropriate that the British — a people long known for manners and fair play — would be the first to lay down the rules of the road. In the 1860s, as America was waging war against itself, authorities in the United Kingdom were dealing with a far less consequential dispute among its citizens.
A new menace had been unleashed upon the country’s roads. Wheezing, hissing monstrosities that frightened pedestrians and horses alike. They were the first steam-powered automobiles, brought to life by a small but growing number of British inventors and hobbyists. Though none of the vehicles were yet capable of speeds that posed a threat to anything on the roads beyond crossing turtles, enough citizens voiced concerns that lawmakers had to do something.
In 1865, British Parliament passed the first of a series of “Locomotive Acts,” so called because authorities didn’t really know what else to call the new contraptions. The vehicles were, after all, powered by steam and behaved much like railroad engines that had simply hopped off their tracks.
The first Act set a speed limit of 4 mph on rural roads and 2 mph in towns, while also requiring a man with a red flag to walk 60 yards ahead of the vehicle at all times to give pedestrians ample notice of its impending arrival. For comparison, consider that the average human walks at a pace of around 3 mph. Later, the distance for the flagman was shortened to 20 yards, but drivers were required to stop their vehicles immediately upon glimpsing a horse. It all made for a long trip into the countryside to enjoy a Sunday picnic.
As combustion engines came along, making self-powered vehicles smaller and more maneuverable, automobile enthusiasts clamored to persuade authorities classify them as “horseless carriages” rather than locomotives to gain exemption from the overly restrictive rules. One driver even staged his own “canonball run” to draw attention to the cause.
In 1895, automobile pioneer John Henry Knight set off on a freewheeling joyride through the English countryside in a nimble three-wheeled, two-seat vehicle of his own design, tearing along at speeds above 20 mph. He made it 150 miles before being stopped by police. While fellow automobile enthusiasts lauded Knight’s stunt, the presiding judge did not. Knight was ticketed for operating a locomotive without a license and the required flagman (but not for speeding).
However, Knight’s gamboling gambit paid off — he got the favorable publicity he desired. Before the year was out Parliament passed its final Locomotive Act, removing the requirement for automobiles to be preceded by a flagman and setting a new speed limit at the breakneck pace of 14 mph. The occasion is commemorated to this day with the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. In the event, the longest-running motoring race in the world, drivers must complete the course in automobiles originally built before 1905.
The new speed limit would come too late for at least one driver, however. Before the new law took effect, a constable spotted Walter Arnold hurtling along a downtown street in Paddock Wood, Kent, at four times the 2 mph limit (it’s not clear exactly how the constable determined Arnold’s speed, considering radar guns were still a half-century from invention.) He was fined one schilling plus court costs. Arnold’s reckless disregard for the law meant he would go down in history as the first motorist ever to be levied a fine for speeding.
America Sets Its Limits
Great Britain’s Walter Arnold was the first motorist to be fined for speeding. He was not, however, the first to be issued a speeding ticket. The practice of issuing paper speeding tickets is an American invention (though one unlikely to stir any patriotic feelings in motorists today.)
The first written citation for speeding was issued to one Harry Myers in 1904 for barreling down West Third Street in Dayton, Ohio, at a speed of 12 mph in an 8 mph zone. Myers seems to have gotten off easy. Five years before, New York City cab driver Jacob German became the first American stopped for speeding, after being chased down by a police officer on a bike. Instead of being handed a ticket, German was immediately arrested and thrown in jail.
Once American police officers got their first taste of issuing speeding tickets, however, they quickly got the hang of it. As early as 1905, police were already setting up speed traps to nab “scorchers” on roads where speeding motorists were common. In response, automobile clubs, including the recently formed American Automobile Association (AAA), actively campaigned against the use of such tactics, along with taxes and tolls they deemed unfair for automobile drivers. It was, of course, just the beginning of a long adversarial relationship between motorists and authorities.
Initially, America’s speed limits were determined entirely by local and state authorities with no set of standards or guidelines to instruct them. This meant speed limits were determined on an almost arbitrary basis, often changing abruptly from one jurisdiction to the next. Different limits were often set for different types of vehicles traveling the same roads. Speed limits could even change according to weather conditions or if it was considered nighttime or daytime. Needless to say, the situation led to endless confusion for drivers.
In the early years of the 20th century, a driver could be tooling along a rural road at the speed limit, cross the border into a neighboring county and be stopped for speeding without ever having changed his pace.
Sometimes the capricious nature of speed limits even worked in motorists’ favor. In 1927, an Ohio driver was found not guilty of speeding despite the fact that he was convincingly shown to be racing along at 10 mph over the limit. Why? Because the road he was traveling was straight and had few intersections, it was daytime and conditions were dry, the driver was deemed to be proceeding at a rate that was “reasonable and proper.”
During that same year, the 5,000 residents of Spencer, Iowa, elected a mayor solely on his promise to end the town’s strict enforcement of local speed limits. After discharging the town’s only patrol officer on his first day in office, Mayor A. H. Avery began the practice of sending offenders friendly and courteous notices that a second offense would result in a ticket. Avery claimed he never had to issue a second complaint.
Backing Off The Gas
Local roads were one matter, highways were another. Because the states controlled all the highways within their borders, speed limits for highways were more uniform than for local and county roads. However, even highway speed limits could vary widely from state to state. Prior to the 1970s, many states set the speed limit for interstate highways under their purview at 75 mph. However, some eastern states set limits as low as 50 mph for heavily traveled stretches, while Montana and Nevada posted no speed limits at all in outlying areas.
Then, in 1974, everything changed — at least with regard to the speed limit for interstate highways. That’s when the federal government wrested control of the interstate highways away from the states and imposed a National Maximum Highway Speed Limit of 55 mph. The new limit was part of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act signed into law by President Richard Nixon in response to America’s first oil crisis. At the time, federal officials believed lowering the speed limit on the interstates would cut the nation’s gasoline consumption as much as 2.2%. Later studies would show the actual savings were less than half that amount.
Though the 55 mph speed limit was intended as a temporary measure to conserve energy, highway safety advocates lobbied the government to keep the limit even after the energy crisis was resolved. As support for their cause, proponents pointed to figures showing a dramatic decrease in highway fatalities corresponding with the lower interstate speed limit. Though the 55 mph speed limit was almost universally reviled by the nation’s drivers, President Jimmy Carter, citing the need to keep America’s highways safe, signed legislation making the limit permanent in 1978. American drivers were told to ease off the pedal because “55 Saves Lives.”
As with the projections for fuel savings, study after study put a question mark at the end of the slogan. Yes, there had been a dramatic drop in fatalities since passage of the 55 mph speed limit. But the biggest reason was that there were far fewer drivers on the highways. The oil crisis had caused gas prices to skyrocket and a sluggish economy forced many nervous families to cancel their vacations. Instead of heading out on the highways on long trips, Americans simply stayed home.
The nation’s 55 mph speed limit, intended to conserve fuel and save lives, did little to accomplish either goal. Faced with mounting public pressure, Congress finally repealed the National Maximum Highway Speed Limit in 1995. Once again, the states were empowered to set their own speed limits for the interstate highways.
In the end, all the 55 mph speed limit really did was inflate the blood pressure of American motorists — especially those who had grown accustomed to cruising the nation’s highways at much faster speeds — for more than two decades. And it most certainly resulted in scores of additional speeding tickets being issued to drivers who pressed their luck along with their accelerator pedals.
Fast Money
We may have left the national 55 mph highway speed limit in our dust. But there are, of course, still limits to how fast we can travel on nearly every road in America. And authorities today remain as committed as ever to enforcing those limits.
In fact, according to tracking service statisticbrain.com, 41 million American drivers are nabbed for speeding every year. With just under 200 million total drivers in the nation, that means an astounding 1 in every 5 drivers will be cited for speeding this year alone.
As anyone who has paid a recent speeding citation can attest, the penalty for getting caught is substantial. The average speeding ticket runs around $152. Collectively, drivers paying speeding tickets reluctantly hand over more than $6.2 billion in fines annually to authorities across the United States. That’s a lot of revenue for cash-strapped municipalities constantly staring down another round of budget cuts.
None of this is to say the police are out to get you, of course. But they do have every reason to vigilantly monitor traffic and ensure speed laws are being followed.
Just something to consider the next time you’re absentmindedly cruising along doing fifteen over while singing to the radio.
