World's First Speeding Ticket (Chalan)
The first car to ever get a speeding ticket was travelling at a whopping 13 km/h (actually, eight miles per hour). It was 1896 and the car was doing four times the legal limit, prompting an officer on a bicycle to chase down the driver. Now that car will be celebrated at the Concours of Elegance, held this year at Hampton Court Palace, in the south-west of London, England. The car was an 1896 Arnold Benz Motor Carriage, driven by Walter Arnold. The law at the time required a top speed of two mph (3.2 km/h) and for a man on foot in front of the car waving a red flag. Arnold, in true pioneering fashion, was having none of that. He was fined one shilling, the equivalent of about $10 today. It's not clear if officers at the time had steam-powered radar devices, if they used a stopwatch, or if the speed was just an estimate. The law was abolished later that year, raising the limit to a more reasonable 23 km/h. To celebrate that day, cars raced 100 km from London to Brighton, with Arnold...
