Ik kan me herinneren ook ergens gelezen te hebben dat er iemand met een bel voor de auto uit moest lopen. Sluit aardig aan bij de discussie.
Cars in 1865 weren’t that fast, but even way back then they knew the day would come that they’d go faster.
In England, they decided to get ahead of the issue with a new law, the Locomotives Act of 1865. They had to be thinking of trains when they designed this act, as the act stated, cars could not go more than two mph through urban areas.
Also, cars needed a crew of three. One was the driver, but another was the flagger. Ahead of the car, the flagger was to walk about waving a flag. This would warn everyone not in a car of the oncoming vehicle, blazing through town at two mph.
If I were a flagger, I would’ve screamed, “LOOKOUT EVERYONE THERE’S A CAR COMING!”
Historians accuse the rail industry for this silliness, that they were combating the eminent competition, but it didn’t matter. A series of motorcar acts in the 1900s would overhaul all of those acts.