"Hit and run" first used to describe baseball or auto accidents?

Factual Questions
1

While reading about liability in my endless course of insurance study, I began musing about how “hit and run” describes very different things with respect to baseball and auto accidents. I began to wonder which field had borrowed the expression from the other, or if the origins were independent.

I could picture the borrowing going either way, because the expression isn’t quite natural in either case. In baseball, the running begins before the hitting, so if you were describing the play de novo you would probably call it a run-and-hit. In auto accidents, the only running involved is metaphorical; it might more naturally be called “hit and flee” or “hit and drive”.

Side question: Are auto accidents where one party leaves the scene referred to as “hit and run” in English-speaking countries other than the US and Canada?

2

I’d think the origins are independent.

Professional baseball came before mass-produced automobiles were numerous enough to require laws regarding their use.

3

Yes, but was the play referred to that way in the late 1800s, before autos became common?

4

To answer the last question, they’re referred to as hit-and-runs here in South Africa (in English, at least).

5

Oh, and in Afrikaans, they’re called “tref-en-trap”, or, “hit and flee”.

6

The OED lists first cite of the baseball reference to 1899.

First cite for a traffic accident: 1924.

It’s baseball.