Who got the first speeding ticket

The first car to ever get a speeding ticket was travelling at a whopping 13 km/h (actually, eight miles per hour). It was 1896 and the car was doing four times the legal limit, prompting an officer on a bicycle to chase down the driver. Now that car will be celebrated at the Concours of Elegance, held this year at Hampton Court Palace, in the south-west of London, England.

The car was an 1896 Arnold Benz Motor Carriage, driven by Walter Arnold. The law at the time required a top speed of two mph (3.2 km/h) and for a man on foot in front of the car waving a red flag. Arnold, in true pioneering fashion, was having none of that. He was fined one shilling, the equivalent of about $10 today. It's not clear if officers at the time had steam-powered radar devices, if they used a stopwatch, or if the speed was just an estimate.

The law was abolished later that year, raising the limit to a more reasonable 23 km/h. To celebrate that day, cars raced 100 km from London to Brighton, with Arnold competing in the first running. That race exists to this day, allowing "veteran cars" - built before 1905 - to make the same journey.

Walter Arnold's place as first speeding ticket recipient doesn't come without controversy. While Arnold certainly got the first fine, at the end of an eight-kilometre chase, he may not have received an actual ticket. Ohio claims that honour, saying that Harry Myers got the first written paper ticket, in 1904.

It's not clear who was the lucky recipient of the first speeding ticket in Canada, but one of the earliest was also one of the most notable. Zoé Laurier, Lady Laurier, wife of Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, was issued a ticket in Ottawa in 1910. She was exceeding the 16 km/h speed limit in the city at the time.

The Arnold Benz Motor Carriage will be on display at this year's Concours of Elegance, held in September. It will be part of a parade of pre-1905 cars at the show, then will be on display for the remainder of the event. Other highlights include the Le Mans-winning Jaguar XJR-9 and a race-ready McLaren F1 GTR. The event hosts some of the most notable and rare cars from across the world.

On this day in 1899, New York City taxicab driver Jacob German became the first person in the United States to be cited for speeding while driving an automobile. German drove a cab for Electric Vehicle Company, which leased its cars to be used as taxis in the bustling city. The car German drove was known as an Electrobat (example pictured above), a fully electric vehicle invented in 1894. About 60 of these cars operated as NYC taxis in 1899.

At the time, New York had speed limits for horses and cars of 8 miles per hour when traveling in a straight line. When cornering, drivers had to slow to at a max speed of 4 miles per hour. German was traveling an astonishing 12 miles per hour. It was so fast that the bicycle officer who pulled German over actually arrested and imprisoned him!

It is unclear if German received a written citation or not. Harry Myers of Dayton, Ohio earned the first documented paper ticket in the US in 1904. He was also traveling a breakneck 12 miles per hour. The first known speeding ticket issued to an automobile driver in the world went to Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent on January 28, 1896. Police caught Arnold going 8 mph in a 2 mph zone, earning himself a fine of 1 shilling!

In the video above, shot by Thomas Edison in 1901, an Electrobat can be seen entering the screen at about the 30 second mark. He is obviously not traveling with the lightning speed of Mr. German.

Most people think of Detroit as the birthplace of the automotive industry, however, Ohioans know that their state played an extremely important role in the infant auto industry during the late nineteenth century. Engineers and inventors in Cleveland, Akron and other regions also impacted the new form of transportation with their ideas and inventions. Because of our important role in the production of automobiles, Ohio is home to many automotive “firsts”…including the first speeding ticket.

Harry Myers was driving down West Third Street in Dayton, when he was pulled over for hastily driving at an alarming speed of 12 miles per hour. He was issued the first paper speeding ticket on the spot in 1904. This speedy Myers is rumored to be the same Harry Myers who famously acted and directed a number of silent films during the early 1900s, but has not been confirmed.

Another Ohio Fun Fact: The Buckeye State historically issues the most speeding tickets each year .

Learn more about Ohio here!

January 28th, 1896 must have started out as an ordinary day for the police constable responsible for Paddock Wood, Kent. As he pushed his bicycle through the quiet streets, he probably had nothing more on his mind than wondering whether today was the day he’d be able to say “You’re nicked, son” to that rogue of a poacher.

While proceeding in an orderly fashion through the village, the peace of the constable’s regular beat was suddenly and rudely shattered. He wasn’t to know that what was happening was also an event of national, and, ultimately, international significance.

Belting past the bobby at a scary 8mph, a motorist by the name of Walter Arnold was about to enter the record books in a burst of exhaust fumes and a flurry of legal activity. Not only was he clearly breaking the speed limit for one of these infernal machines, which was 2mph, but also, and even more damningly, he had no man with a red flag preceding him as the law required.

The bobby on the beat set off in hot pursuit on his regulation issue bicycle, finally catching up with this deranged road racer after five miles. Having captured his man, what was a bobby to do in pre-speeding ticket days? It’s not hard to imagine a subsequent scene between motorist and constable.

“Gasp – didn’t you hear me shouting at you to pull over sir? – cough – must ask you to accompany me – hang on a minute – wheeze…“

“Have you thought of asking your superiors for an upgrade, constable? I could provide them with a very good deal on a Benz motor, finest German engineering…”

“Now I’ve got my breath back, I’m writing you a citation, sir.”

Walter Arnold was no ordinary motorist. He was also one of the earliest car dealers in the country and the local supplier for Benz vehicles. He was well ahead of the times and set up his own car company producing “Arnold” motor carriages at the same time. It has to be said that the subsequent publicity surrounding his speeding offence probably wasn’t entirely unwelcome, and it was certainly a game changer for the automobile.

The London Daily News detailed the four counts, also known as “informations”, on which Walter Arnold faced charges at Tunbridge Wells court. Arnold’s vehicle was described several times in the newspaper court report as a “horseless carriage”, and the case clearly raised some interesting philosophical as well as legal points for the bench.

The first count, which reads oddly now, was for using a “locomotive without a horse,” the next for having fewer than three persons “in charge of the same”, indicating the enduring influence of horse-drawn and steam locomotion when it came to legislating the new vehicles. Next came the actual speeding charge, for driving at more than two miles per hour, and finally, a charge for not having his name and address on the vehicle.

In defence, Arnold’s barrister stated that the existing locomotive acts had not foreseen this type of vehicle, throwing in the names of a couple of elite users, Sir David Salmons and the Hon. Evelyn Ellis, who had never had any problems while out and about in theirs. Whether this was intended to impress the court or to make some point about one law for the rich and another for the man in the street is not entirely clear.

Since this was a case that would set a precedent, referencing names of people who were in the public eye would avoid the problem that has become a by-word for judges who are out of touch – the “who he?” reaction. The origin of this phrase, frequently referenced by satirical magazine Private Eye, lies in the response of one judge in the 1960s who was heard to ask in court “Who are the Beatles?”

Mr Cripps, defending, said that if the Bench considered the vehicle was a locomotive, therefore presumably legislating it within existing acts, they should charge a nominal fine. Eventually, Mr Arnold was fined 5 shillings for the first count of “using a carriage without a locomotive horse” (aka “horseless carriage”) plus £2.0s.11d costs. On each of the other counts, he was to pay 1 shilling fine and 9 shillings costs. Effectively then, his speeding offence cost him a shilling. All in all, the publicity it created may have made it worth it.

The case may have had an influence on the changes to legislation shortly afterwards. The man with the red flag was no longer required, presumably leading to labour exchange staff scratching their heads over what to do with a skill that clearly wasn’t that transferable. The fearsome machines no longer needed a minimum of three people to control them (“Whoa car, ah said whoa, whoa!” to paraphrase cartoon character Yosemite Sam).

There’s more than a touch of one famous literary character about Mr Arnold, whose love of speeding seems to match that of Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad in ‘The Wind in the Willows’: “‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad. ‘The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today – in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped – always somebody else’s horizon. O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!’”

Unlike Toad, however, who ended up in “the remotest dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the length and breadth of Merry England”, his sentence extended for “gross impertinence to the rural police”, Arnold sped off into a glorious new dawn. The speed limit now rose to a breathtaking 14mph, and drivers throughout the land, including Walter Arnold in his Arnold Benz, celebrated with the Emancipation Run from London to Brighton.

Arnold’s beautiful little vehicle took centre stage at the Hampton Court Concours of Elegance in 2017. Clearly showing the ancestry of horse-drawn vehicles in its design, with carriage lamps on either side and a coachman style bench with footboard, it is an important part of our past, telling us so much about one of the most significant transitional periods of human history.

Miriam Bibby BA MPhil FSA Scot is a historian, Egyptologist and archaeologist with a special interest in equine history. Miriam has worked as a museum curator, university academic, editor and heritage management consultant. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Glasgow.