Red Flag Act

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Charles Rolls at the wheel of a Peugeot around 1896; in front is a pedestrian with a warning flag.

The Red Flag Act was a law in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland introduced in 1865 and repealed in 1896. It should serve to avoid accidents in road traffic caused by the increasingly widespread steam cars . The law stipulated that a vehicle without horses or an automobile could travel at a maximum speed of 4 miles (6.4 km / h) per hour. Within the localities the limit was 2 miles per hour. Every automobile had to have two people present to drive the vehicle, and a pedestrian had to run ahead, who had to wear a red flag to warn the population. This regulation enforced a speed limit. In 1875, however, 1,589 people died in Great Britain as a result of road traffic accidents involving steam cars and locomobiles .

Since the end of 1896, cars and motor vehicles have been allowed to travel faster than pedestrians again. The maximum permissible speed has been increased to 5 to 12 miles per hour, depending on the weight class. To celebrate this occasion, automobile enthusiasts organized the London-Brighton car race for the first time on November 14, 1896 .

Historical classification

It is widely believed that the powerful railroad companies and the horse owner lobby initiated the introduction of what was perceived to be a drastic law in order to eliminate unpleasant new competition. However, there is no evidence for this thesis. In the 1860s there was no reason to fear the competition of locomotives on roads because their number was and remained small. On the other hand, the number of horse transports increased unhindered throughout the 19th century and for many years after the Red Flag Act was repealed; the number of horse-drawn carts in Britain did not peak until the 1920s. The thesis that the law hindered the development of the automobile also seems double-edged: In Great Britain an independent automobile industry did not emerge until around 1896 and thus 30 years after the law came into force and eight years later than in the German Empire (1888), where there was no comparable anti-car law. At that time, the law had long been handled more laxly and hardly enforced.

The engine manufacturer Dormans refers to the Red Flag Act (1919)

Regardless of these considerations, the British public, above all the automotive industry, celebrated the abolition of the law by the House of Lords on August 14, 1896 as a revolution, and twenty years later celebrated the day every year as Emancipation Day, i.e. the day of liberation from being anti-technology perceived Red Flag Act.

Comparable regulations in other countries

Similar laws, which from today's perspective expressed great reluctance to motorized vehicles, existed in many places - for example, in some US cities you had to register a car trip with the authorities in advance. In the Swiss canton of Graubünden, cars were banned from 1900 to 1925.

There was a similar regulation for the southern German Walhalla Railway. The person with the red flag walking in front of the train was popularly called "Fahnerlbua" (flag boy) in Bavarian.

See also

literature

  • James J. Flink: The Automobile Age. Cambridge (Mass.) 1988, p. 21.
  • Maxwell G. Lay: The History of the Road. From the beaten path to the motorway. Frankfurt am Main 1995, pp. 159-162.
  • Kenneth Richardson: The British Motor Industry 1896-1939 . London 1977, pp. 11-13.
  • Marcel Hänggi: Stories of Progress. For a good use of technology. Frankfurt am Main 2015, pp. 192–208.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ For example, Maxwell G. Lay: The History of the Road. From the beaten path to the motorway . 1995, p. 159 to 162 . or Adrian Smith: Privatized Infrastructure: The Role of Government . 1999, p. 36 .
  2. ^ David Edgerton: The Shock of the Old. Technology and Global Change since 1900 . 2006, p. 33 .
  3. ↑ Kenneth Richardson: The British Motor Industry 1896-1939 . 1977, p. 33 .
  4. ↑ Kenneth Richardson: The British Motor Industry 1896-1939 . 1977, p. 192 to 208 . See in general for the myth of the Red Flag Act: Chapter "Tempo", in: Marcel Hänggi: Progress Stories. For a good use of technology . 2015, p. 13 .
  5. ↑ The advertisement says that high quality standards were already being maintained for automotive engines when the Red Flag Act was still in effect, i.e. at a time when the automotive sector was little concerned with the government and standardization bodies.
  6. ^ Emancipation Day. The Development of the Motor Car. In: The Times . November 14, 1916, p. 10
  7. ↑ For an overview see Brian Ladd: Autophobia. Love and Hate in the Automotive Age . 2008.
  8. ↑ Jürg Simonett: The refused automobility: the Graubünden car ban 1900-1925 . In: Rote Revue: Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur , Issue 4/1993, pp. 37 ff. Doi : 10.5169 / seals-341019 Simonett named Felici Maissen as the most important work: The battle for the automobile in Graubünden 1900-1925 , Chur 1968.