We spend all day obeying the law when we drive our cars. Well, okay, maybe not ALL the time, and some people don’t bother at all. But there had to be a first time – today we look at the first time five illegal things were done in cars!
Breaking the speed limit
While it is claimed that the first actual speeding ticket was issued in Ohio in 1904, the first recorded incident of someone being punished for breaking the speed limit happened in New York in 1899.
Jacob German was a taxi driver who used a car made by the Electric Vehicle Co. to carry passengers around the streets of New York. While horse-drawn cabs were still far more popular, German was one of around 60 cabbies who used the EVs.
It is recorded that a police officer on a bicycle noticed German speeding down Lexington Avenue at the terrifying speed of 12mph (19km/h), or in other words, 50 percent faster than the speed limit of 8mph (13km/h). For this heinous crime, German was not issued with a speeding ticket, but rather thrown in jail!
Car fatality
If driving at 12mph hardly seems a crime worthy of jail, then it may pay to consider this story. On the 17th of August 1896 Arthur Edsall was driving his Roger-Benz horses carriage in London at the dangerous speed of 4mph (despite the Roger-Benz only being designed to go 2mph).
Unfortunately a woman named Bridget Driscoll chose that moment to step into the street in front of Edsall’s speeding (relative term) car. Witnesses say that Edsall rung his bell and shouted, but any such efforts were wasted as he was travelling at a “tremendous pace” akin to a “fire engine going as fast as a horse could gallop”.
Driscoll was said to be “bewildered” and frozen in place as Edsall barrelled ever-so-slowly towards her and was struck and killed, making her the first person to be killed by a car.
Car theft
A few months before Arthur Edsall plowed down the unfortunate Bridget Driscoll, Baron de Zuylen of Paris was going through an early automotive trauma of his own.
In June 1896 he had taken his Peugeot back to the factory for some repairs when he found out the a mechanic had stolen it. It was perhaps not the smartest thing the unnamed mechanic had ever done, as cars were a relative rarity still and he was quickly tracked down by the police in the nearby town of Asnieres.
While this is the first “official” car theft, a far higher profile one had taken place several years earlier when Bertha Benz took her husband’s invention for a 90km joyride (when he wouldn’t) to promote it. She also managed to invent brake linings along the way when she stopped at a cobbler to get him to fit a leather lining to the brake shoes to improve their performance.
Mobile phone call
Okay, so making a phone call from a car is hardly the biggest crime on this list, and it is not a crime at all if the car isn’t moving, but bear with us on this one, because the first phone call made from a car also happened to be the first “mobile” telephone call ever made as well!
On June 7th, 1948 an unnamed driver in St. Louis pulled out a handset from under his car’s dashboard and placed a phone call. A team from AT&T had been working for more than a decade to achieve this feat and by 1948 a wireless telephone service was available in almost 100 cities and highway corridors.
The “network” was primitive to say the least, however, and at most three subscribers could make calls at one time in any city.
Illegal street race
The first race between two self-powered road vehicles also happened to be the first illegal street race.
No neon-coloured Hondas, ridiculously lowered Toyotas or pumped up muscle cars took part, however, as the race took place on the 30th of August, 1867. 22-year old James Boulton raced his father’s steam-powered horseless carriage against an unknown competitor over 8 miles (13km) between Ashton-under-Lyne and Old Trafford in England, taking the win in what was no doubt a rather slow time.
While Boulton’s father knew of the race (and was apparently even present), the race was highly illegal as both vehicle were violating the “red flag” law that required any self-powered vehicle to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag.
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