Ask Mike: The first speeding ticket
Hey Guys,
Today’s cars can go zero to sixty in the time it takes you to read this sentence. But that wasn’t always the case. Back when the first cars were manufactured, the top speeds were, by today’s standards, comically slow. One has to wonder when the first speeding ticket was issued. And just how fast was this bandit of the blacktop going?
I thought there might be some difficulty in tracking the answer down, but the pursuit was a lot like beating a Yugo in a drag race. According to Ohio History Central, the dubious distinction belongs to one Harry Myers. In 1904, Mr. Myers was given the very first speeding ticket for going a whopping 12 miles per hour on West Third Street in Dayton, Ohio.
But hold the phone. That might not be totally accurate. A blog from Open Salon explains that the first speeding violation may have actually occurred five years earlier. According to the blog, New York City cab driver Jacob German was arrested in Manhattan for going 12 miles per hour in May, 1899.
The blog goes on to note that back in 1899, the police didn’t actually give out paper tickets. So, in a way, Mr. Myers may have still earned the first actual ticket. However Mr. German, who drove for the Electric Vehicle Company, scored the first violation. As Planet Buzo points out, it seems appropriate that “our country’s first arrest for reckless driving should be leveled at a New York cabbie.”
Thanks for reading,
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wow 12mph? that is so interesting! If the speeding ticket was given at 12mph And todays limits are around 70 you can only guess how much faster we’ll be going in another 100 years.
I read somewhere that Ulesses S. Grant was given a speeding ticket, I forget how long ago, but he was on a horse when he was issued it.
It was on Snapple facts, #871
Yet no comment on a speed limit at that time, at least point out if there wasn’t one listed and the guy was just considered to be going too fast.
lol 12 mph. really interesting post.
SPEED DEMON!!!
12MPH eh? I’m sure back then some people were able to run that fast and still get a speeding ticket LOL!
Yeah, 12 was speeding then and we aren’t allowed to go that slow now, you can actually get pulled over for being reckless for going too slow! Things have really changed since then. I wonder what a car wreck would look like going 12 miles an hour.
was there a true speed limit then?
I remember reading a newspaper story about my father who got a ticket for doing 12 mph on a bicycle in New York City. Don’t know the year but he was born in 1885.
I find this a little hard to believe, because by the 1920′s during the alcohol prohibition, bootleggers were devising genius ways to turn their cars into very fast machines to outrun police and the G-men. This cars were so fast that they were the birth of NASCAR. So yeah, I have a hard time believing 12mph was the top speed just a few years before those hot-rods took over.
If 12 mph was speeding what was the speed limit.
12mph? lol wow.. thats a hair faster than the speed of “raging turtle”.
go go speed racer!
12 mph could kill someone if they were laying right in front of it?
Wait… how did they know how fast he was going??? i doubt they had a radar.
How did the officer know the true measurement of speed? Did he have markers and a stop watch?
hahaha that is ridiculously slow, im pretty sure people can run faster than that, and you could definitely go faster than that on a bicycle!
I heard he was going 4 times the speed limit or summat like that.
One may not think so but back then a crash at 12 mph could be just as deadly as they are then. In the early 1900s the vehicles didn’t have seatbelts and the windshields were made out glass that when broke could actually decapitate a person. And the steering columns were constructed differently and could pierce someone. I hate to sound like a know it all but I thought that may answer some questions as to how bad the wrecks could have been and why they even worried about speeding
Mike, I have to disagree with your premise. I’m 57 and we drove *fast* (and well) back in the 60s (and long before that too.) I recall driving a Dodge Super Bee, 440 CID with 2 4 bbls and a 4 speed which would hit 140 MPH up U.S. 23 before I chickened out and let off the gas. — *that* was a fast car and there were many others equally fast. The roadways today, other than the jam of witless traffic, are much more mild than they were when I (and about 10 million just like me) terrorized old folks who putted along the nation’s highways.
In fact, young people today, as a group, can’t drive like we did — our cars were and extension of us (guys, that is.) We gots lots of experience because we only had one speed: wide open.
Now I’m a retired law enforcement officer of 25 years — I handed out lots of speeding tickets in Ohio over that time.
Contest them all! That’s my advice — you might get lucky if the judge is in a good mood!
best regards.
Everyone is making it look like people back then were stupid. Take into consideration that the sense of speed was hard to bare especially when that vehicle is not a horse that you can talk to, and you are giving a new purpose for your foot. We have cars now that can easily see 100mph, but depending on the driver, some may never want to obsess about it, and try doing it. That is why we have some drivers people can’t stand.
Doesn’t it figure that OHIO is the first one.. I fuggin hate Ohio!!! I live here and I can say the cops are a-holes and are notorious throughout the USA for being hard-on’d for giving out speeding tickets…
They may not care about rape, murder, and theft but NOBODY speed on THEIR streets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get your man el Capitan…
I heard that in the US, you still have resentments against automated “radar guns” or “robocops”. Well, I got my first speeding ticket by obe of them when I was just 18 (the legal driving age over here) when I was leaving from work in a 50 km/h zone and made 75.
I got my second one in the same place a week later. Yea, call me stupid.
That was 20 years ago. I read a wonderful book in the meantime, and I think everyone should read it. It’s Tom Vanderbilt’s “Traffic: Why we drive the way that we do (and what it says about us)”.
Way back when that ticket was issued the maximum speed was 4mph this was fixed so as the servant in front with a red flag could warn folk to get out of the way. This lasted till 1904 when the limit was taken off. The current maximum speed limit was introduced as a temporary measure during the 1970s fuel crisis.
What about Great Britain, the first person to be convicted of speeding, Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, who on 28 January 1896 was fined for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h) in a 2 mph zone. He was fined 1 shilling plus costs.
Matt
HowToBorrowMoney.co.uk
Wow, goes to show. I have a lead foot and if anyone is going any miles below the speed limit I try to pass them.
What is this guy speed racer? lol 12 miles. good thing he got stopped when he did or he would’ve killed someone for sure!!
actually i read in the facts on forza motorsport it was actually 40 mph in detroit
Haha I can run faster than that! (not for very long though haha) I know because I ran past those radar signs that show cars how fast they are going, and flash if they should slow down. It said 14 haha.
HA!! My first speeding ticket was NOT issued because the Trooper “couldn’t catch me” to get me with the radar. He estimated me at 112! That was in a ’67 Electra down a hill.
This was an interesting article.
Hey all,
Mike narrated what possibly happened in 1904.
“Today’s cars can go zero to sixty in the time it takes you to read this sentence” May be that that is all he wanted to convey and of course, speeding is not any healthy attitude in a public transport system.
If one wants to reach 180mi/hr while driving in one’s backyard, fine.Do the same in a race track, fine,nobody complains.
Think of a airline pilot-he starts with a Cessna.Gradually he gets into a semi-turbojet.After X hours of flying, he is introduces to a bigger craft.
It takes time to develop the reflexes to control the machine. No one should be using a F-X fighter that
can reach mach2 or mach3 as his first aircraft to begin his flying lesson.
The bottom line is,being a responsible parent, do not allow your teenager to drive the 600+hp car you have.
Thanks.
My Dad got a ticket in the early 21st century and he complained. That was his 1st ticket, he told me, since 1930. At that time he got it for going over 100 miles over the speed limit. He claims that that was a set up – it was the Kentucky Derby weekend and a small town got a speed limit just for the weekend. They posted their signs on trees. It was a money maker for them. Never the less, he didn’t get any sympathy from me. He must have been going at least 105 through a small town on a 2 lane road!
Maybe he was in a school zone.
The first speeding ticket? I don’t know, how fast was this ticket going? Have they gone faster since because of changes in the way they are manufactured? You know, the type (no pun intended) of ink used, whether inkjet or laser and the material the ticket is manufactured from – paper or plastic. And if the edges have been designed for least wind resistance (as in golf balls).
My question is how did they get an accurate speed lol..? laser radar wasn’t in use yet..
This discussion reminds me of a film shot on Market Street, San Francisco in 1906. It’s amazing how the cable cars, horse-drawn buggies and carriages, automobiles, and people weave through each other. Those were very different times. Note that a car going 12 mph would indeed be speeding! The video can be found on YouTube or at http://www.archive.org. The Miles Brothers produced the film and it is part of the Prelinger Archives.
How did those coppers back in 1899 and 1904 know the perps were actually going 12mph? I don’t expect they had radar guns. I imagine they had to simply ask the drivers how fast they were going, maybe thats why they always ask “Do you know how fast you were going” when they pull you over for speeding. Ha ha.
Less than the time it takes me to read that sentence, eh? You must think I’m a very slow reader! Though, judging by the quality of spelling on this site, I suppose your statement is true for the average Yahoo! Answers user.
thats… great. i would be so impatient haha
60′s cars could out accelerate todays cars plus they weighed more. challenge a hemi cuda!
How could they MEASURE how fast they were actually going… You know what I mean?
An amazing article, I wouldn’t need a car since I could go more faster on my bike, maybe running during those time. This would’ve made me be on the Olympic team if I really did!
At 12mph you’re really cruising
DANG that’s crazy my first one was on valentines day after a date; i was on my way home LATE at night, I was going down a street off the freeway and apparently was going 65 in a 45…. =/ I ended up getting a HUGE ticket
My grandma was there when they issued the first speeding ticket
So he went 12mph…but how were they able to tell?
It seems that two tickets were issued for going 12 MPH. How exactly did they measure the speed in order to determine this?
I love cool trivia facxz
Speeding tickets preceede the automobile by many decades. U.S. Grant got a speeding ticket soon after the Civil War for racing his horse and buggy through the streets of Wash. D.C.
Wow, he was really shredding it up out there! 12 miles per hour! Woo-ee! What a speed demon!
Great thing, now the world’s cheapest car TATA NANO can go 0-12mph in a just 2 or 3 seconds; just accelerating over the 1st gear itself.
It is the technology that had changed our life-style. I believe the person who went 12mph would be using some of the costliest car of the time like the one, we use today for speeding.
At present, guys say wow to 125mph but that time guys would have said “wow, he had reached 12mph”.
It means in next 20 years, we will say Careera GT, my favorite as one of the useless car.
It is true that when the first Careera was born in 1970s, we say it wow but now, we say it a useless vehicle.
Thanks a lot to the greatest scientist & Engineers of the world who had changed the whole scenario.
wow that is something! 12 mph isnt even really a speed now a days. my bicycle can go faster than that if it’s rusted lmao. back than i guess it was. but that is very hilarious…
chechk your history man, read the commentsand look aroud the world not just your hometown homeboy. Just avoid tickets by convincing cops that they cant prove it and by all means don’t drink n’ drive to in n’ out
LOL…just saw this. If someone was given a ticket for going 12MPH back then I very curious to know what the speed limit was?
well,, can i ask HOW did they figure out how fast he was going?
to say 12 miles/hour, i think someone ran by his side to check the speed meter!!!
Maybe they should have given them out to cyclists as well and perhaps half the animal kingdom…
12 mph is incredibly slow! It’s hard enough to slow down to 20 mph for school zones. If I got a ticket for going 12 mph, I would totally hire a traffic attorney and contest it in court. What was the speed limit back then when that ticket was given?
Excuse me Mike, am from the other side of the pond here, but have an important issue to raise: are you sure there weren’t speed fines given to Europeans long before America?