I just got done watching what has to be one of the funniest things on Netflix. It is a made for TV special from way back in 1961. And guess who the narrator was? Give up? Groucho Marx!!
It’s about the beginnings of the automobile in America, and some of the strange laws that were put in place. to stop the menace of the car. It is called: Merrily We Roll Along: The Early Days of the Automobile
I wrote down some of the laws that were presented because I could not believe they were real. So here is a quick rundown of some of the best.
Law #1
When one drives a motorized vehicle, someone must ride in front on a horse waving a red flag to warn of the vehicles approach.
Law #2
In some states if a motorist frightened a horse, he would have to pay a $100.00 fine for every mile the horse ran before being stopped.
Law #3
It was illegal to exceed 15 mph. Sometimes. Many places had secret speed limits, and would change them constantly without notice, then reap the profits at what were known as scorch traps.
Law #4
If a horse balked and froze, the motorist would have to disembark his passengers.
He would then have to try to fool the horse that the vehicle was not there by covering the vehicle with a canvas sheet painted to look like the surrounding country side.
If the horse was smart and still would not pass the vehicle, the motorist and his passengers would have to dismantle all of the accessories that they could and hide them in the grass by the side of the road.
If that did not work the motorist would have to push his vehicle into the ditch and cover it with plants and twigs and such as to camouflage the vehicle.
Law #5
When approaching an intersection one must come to a complete stop.
One would then have to stand up and look in all directions.
One then must yell loudly and sound a horn.
One must also have in his possession a firearm of a sufficient caliber which he will fire into the air.
He then must dismount the vehicle and light off a roman candle or some other explosive device as final warning of his approach.
An opponent of law #5 wrote:
This is highway robbery by the government. For if this law is followed by motorists they can be charged with un-orderly conduct for yelling and using an explosive in the city, discharging a fire arm in the city, and in more religious places for breaking the laws of the Sabbath.
Now we have to realize that we were a country built upon the backs of horses, and carried in carriages and trains. The car when it came out was a threat to the established businesses of the time. If people could get around without a horse then the liveries and horse shoers and the farmers who grew the hay would lose their income. If people could go wherever they wished, when they wished, then the railroads would lose passengers.
Though an interesting point to be made is that the car, which we now blame for global temperature change, actually helped the environment and the health of people when it first started to become more available to the average citizen. The horse dung in the major cities was so bad, that it actually was starting to make cities inhospitable. Disease was rampant, and the stench was horrendous. And just like the methane problem we are having with cows today, it was just as bad with the millions of horses. And the trains of the era all ran on steam which meant that the engines had to keep the boilers hot by constantly burning coal. If you think the amount of pollutants being put into the air by a few coal plants is bad, think of thousands of trains belching out coal smoke 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It would be decades before there were enough cars on the road to be as bad as the horses and trains were becoming.
So the introduction of the car was not seen as a welcoming thing. It was seen as something that is always mistrusted by any era of humanity throughout history. It was Change.
Looking back now though it is rather hilarious some of the steps that politicians took to try and save the horse from becoming irrelevant.
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