traffic laws before the automobile

“Traffic law before cars” or “You can’t do that with a horse.”

Were there speeding laws, and if so how could anyone tell?
Was there a consensus on what side of the road to ride on?
Were there parking laws? I’ve read old news stories about horses and carts going off by themselves and maybe finding their way home, did people get tickets for that kind of thing?

Obviously people were getting run down in the street before cars, and I’m sure someone would press charges. With some of these lesser things I wonder how restrictive the laws were. How much more were cities buttoned up compared to the country roads? Are any laws we have today made to deal with bicycles before autos became a concern?

Ulysses S. Grant once got a speeding ticket while president, so there were laws against it, though most likely the charge was more like reckless driving and modern-day speeding.

Horses and carriages stayed to the right by the mid-19th century by general consensus if not by law.

There were issue with parking, though I don’t know about the laws. The big problem in big cities were trucks – those used by deliverymen to deliver goods. Often, they would leave the truck behind and take just the horses and abandoned trucks were left there. Garbage was thrown beneath them (as was horse manure). In 1895, New York City passed an ordinance to prohibit them, but it was not well enforced, especially since the drivers would take a wheel off the truck, making them a pain the the ass to move.

I still think this apocryphal until shown a contermporary cite.

I believe there were traffic regulations in ancient Rome. Yhat’s long before the automobile.

Actually most areas drove carriages on the left throughout history. People originally walked to the left so you could more easily draw your sword if threatened by a stranger (most people are right-handed). The size & design of wagons (and roads) eventually caused the switch (except in England).

Here’s Cecil’s column explaining the details. I have a fondness for this question because it was an online search for it nearly 15 years ago which first lead me to The Straight Dope…

Read the article.

Whether Grant was speeding or not, the point remains the same.

This is true, but by the 19th century in the US, people drove on the right. You can see drawings and photos of pre-automobile traffic that show the carriages and horses bearing right. And cars didn’t just pick driving to the right at random: they stuck with the prevailing traffic rules.

According to a Cracked article I read recently (I can’t seem to find the one at the moment), driving on the left became the custom when the driver might have to draw a sword against the passing vehicle, and in America, it changed to the right to make it easier to use a rifle against the passing vehicle.

Even before cars, there were traffic laws for bicycles.
“During that era, bicycles were enormously popular and also annoying to nonriders. Sound familiar? Carriage drivers complained of cyclists spooking their horses. Pedestrians complained that cyclists carelessly ran them down. Laws restricting two-wheeled transportation were passed, such as the 1901 statute in Rexburg, Idaho, setting a bicycle speed limit of 5 miles per hour on Main Street and 12 mph elsewhere in town, punishable with a $25 fine that could be worked off with street labor at a rate of $2 per day.”

where speeding was a problem people would create “speed bumps” by placing piles of fragrant alfalfa and clover at corners.

Apparently driving on the right side of the road was common in the North American British colonies for a long time. This remained a de-facto, social standard until Pennsylvania passed a statute providing for driving on the right on the new Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike (modern US Route 30).

The USDOT indicates that the handling dynamics of Conestoga wagons greatly contributed to the inertia of driving on the right. They didn’t introduce the practice, but it was more difficult to drive a Conestoga on the left than it was to drive a lot of other stuff you could get in that way, at least if you were right-handed.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/right.cfm

I saw a PBS special once that mentioned this incident. Apparently, the specific offense was that Grant was riding his horse at a gallop. The same concept as speeding, certainly.

What’s most interesting is that before the 1920s or so, there was no concept of “jaywalking” in the modern sense. Pedestrians commonly walked down the middle of streets, and they always had the right of way. If a vehicle hit a pedestrian, the vehicle was presumed at fault.

It was only when cars started to become so popular and fast that they had to have space resevered for them that the idea that pedestrians should watch out for them, and could be at fault, came about.

There was an episode of the podcast 99% Invisiblethat talked about this. (The link is to the website about this episode, not the podcast itself.)

Right on the cusp, but I recall reading a fascinating article about England’s “road tractor” laws of around 1890-1910. They were so restrictive that they had to be overturned before cars could be of much use. 2 MPH on open roads, had to have someone walking ahead with a red flag or lantern, had to stop if any (foot or horse) traffic passed by, etc.

Cecil’s column covers this, American (and French) wagons were larger than those in England.

Can’t say I’ve ever heard this before, nor can I picture it making sense…

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Can’t say I’ve ever heard this before, nor can I picture it making sense…
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Why not? If you are a right-handed swordsman, you would prefer to have the reach that it would give you by sitting on the right and passing on the left.

If you are a rifleman, you hold the stock in your right side and aim across your body leading with your left side, so you want your target to be to your left.

Ok, if you’re aiming & shooting while on the back of a horse, yeah. But I’ve still never read anything about it…

I see we’ve veered off the road here. As for left-right driving rules, in North America, the task of keeping out of the ditch or swamp was more important early on than the task of avoiding other vehicles. The definitive reference work on this subject is
Kincaid, Peter. The Rule of the Road: An International Guide to History and Practice. Greenwood Press, 1986.

Writes Kincaid: “In summary, different types of transport, all used by right-handed people, tended to produce different rules of the road. Armed walkers and armed horsemen tended to keep left to leave their swordarms free. Horse riders kept left in any case because they mounted from the left and stayed near the edge where it was easier and safer to mount and dismount than in the middle of the road. People leading horses with their right hands tended to keep right because the led horse was then protected from passing traffic. Carters tended to keep right because they walked on the left side of their horses, leading with the right hand, and by keeping right could walk in the middle of the road…to avoid collisions. Postilion riders tended to keep right because they sat on the left-rear horse and thus could better judge clearances…Drivers who sat on the vehicle kept left because they sat on the right to keep their whip hands free and could judge clearances better when passing if they kept left.”

Kincaid describes other contributing factors such as conformance with neighbors (undoubtedly the reason for Canada), influence of colonization, national unity, imported vehicles, etc. Although we tend to think of a keep-left rule requiring right-hand controls, and vice versa, he points out a number of instances where curbside controls have been preferred to centerline controls.

As of 1986, he counted 118 “independent territories” with right-hand traffic and 51 with left-hand, adding: “The above figures show what a minority rule left-hand traffic is today. Countries which use it account for only about a third of the world’s population, a sixth of its area, a quarter of its roads, and a sixth of its motor vehicles.” A number of countries have changed their rule of the road, including, since 1950: Cameroon, Belize, Ethiopia, Sweden, Bahrain, Iceland, Burma, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Yemen. All these but Burma changed from left to right.

The American expert on this subject is Richard H. Hopper, whose article “Left-Right: Why Driving Rules Differ,” appeared in Transportation Quarterly 36 (1982), pp. 541-548.

It was only when Bicycles became so popular and fast that vehicles (and pedestrians) shared the road in most of the world.

Before that, trains ran on railroads. Canal boats in canals. Carriages on carriageways. Horses on bridle paths. People on footpaths.

It used to take us half an hour to drive 5miles into town on the carriage-way. The foot path went straight down into the valley, then back up again. Jane Austen(?) had a similar problem: they had to start early if they wanted to impress people by taking the carriage to church instead of walking.

Cities are different. But cities were rare.

Or even driving a team of horses while sitting on the wagon or whatever.