As you hit the roads for the holidays, no doubt you'll be assaulted by any number of annoyances: clogged tunnels, draconian speed limits, overzealous speed enforcement, usurious tolls, broken parking meters and endless traffic lights.
This assault on speed didn't happen overnight. In fact, it's taken centuries. So, as you sit in traffic over the next few days, you might want to consider your misfortune is far from unique. Your ancestors suffered too. Take a look.
Toll roads: You may hate the thought of paying a fee to use a road, but you're not the only one to grumble about it. The first recorded toll road ran between Babylon and Syria around 2000 B.C. and was run by the Persian military. In the United States, Virginia built the first turnpike, which derives its name from the tollgate made of wooden spears known as pikes. But early turnpikes were privately run, and poorly maintained; fees rarely covered the cost of maintenance. By the time the automobile came on the scene, the call was made for the government to step in. By the 1930s, it had.
Car accidents: No matter where you end up driving this holiday weekend, odds are good that you'll encounter a traffic accident. In Norfolk, Va., for example, the first car accident occurred on June 29, 1903 when a pack of dogs chased after a car being driven by Mr. and Mrs. R. Calvert Taylor along Bowden's Ferry Road. Taylor lost control of the car after one of the dogs became entangled in one of the front wheels. The Taylors were not hurt in the mishap.
Speed limits: Speed limit laws date to 1901, and were usually mandated by the state or local governments. The Virginia legislature established the first speed limits in 1906: 8 mph in town, on curves, or where people or horses were present. In the open countryside, up to 15 mph was allowed. As cars grew more powerful, most states posted speed limits on interstates at 70 mph. This changed in 1973, when Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Transportation to withhold highway funds from states that did not adopt a maximum 55 mph speed limit. By 1974, the double nickel was the America's top legal speed. It lasted until 1987, when Congress allowed states to increase speed limits on rural interstates to 65 mph. In 1995, the National Highway System Designation Act allowed states to set their own limits once again.
Tunnels: Tunnels are almost old as mankind, but until the rise of railroads in the 19th century, tunnels weren't common. The first one to pass under water was built under the River Thames in London. If you think your local tunnel projects are taking a long time to complete, consider that the Thames tunnel was started in 1825 and completed in 1843 — 18 years later.
Radar: If you've been stopped for speeding, thank the radar gun. American physicists are credited with to developing the first practical use of radar in 1925. World War II brought radar into common use for tracking planes, which led to its adoption by police department in the early 1950s. Those first ones were far from portable: they had to be plugged in. That problem was solved with the development of the transistor in the 1960s. But radar's accuracy was debated and more than a few speeders used this to their advantage until the introduction of Lidar in the 1990s. Lidar could pinpoint a car's speed within a fraction of a second using a beam of light, leaving lead foots with little hope of escaping a ticket.
Traffic signals: At the dawn of the automobile age, streets were jammed with trolleys, horses, horse manure, carriages and that newfangled invention, the horseless carriage. By 1914, some cities used traffic cops located in fifteen-foot traffic towers, manually operating semaphores that read "proceed" or "stop." Cleveland, Ohio went a step further, replacing the semaphores with red and green lights. But given the number of intersections in a city, manually operating signals wasn't the best use of police officers. In 1920, Detroit police inspector William L. Potts solved the problem by installing the first three-color, automatic four-way traffic light at the intersection of Michigan and Woodward avenues. No word on how long it took before a motorist ran the red light.
Parking meters: Carl Magee, newspaper reporter and founder of The Oklahoma News, was appointed to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce's traffic committee and charged with finding a solution to the city's parking problem. It seems that there wasn't enough parking for all of the cars populating town streets. Magee's solution? The parking meter. Working with Oklahoma State University engineering students, the idea was perfected and the city installed 175 by July 1935. An hour's parking cost five cents. Magee joined a group of investors to form the Dual Parking Meter Co., manufacturer of the Park-O-Meter.
