Traffic Laws and Revenues
In 1901 the State of New York became the first to require an owner of an automobile to purchase and affix a license plate on the vehicle. It took less than two decades for the rest of the nation to jump on that bandwagon. Driver’s licenses themselves took longer to become as popular, in 1935 there were still nine states which did not require a driver’s license to operate a vehicle on their roads and streets. Few states required a driving test to acquire a license. There was little formal training and no minimum training requirement.
Often the person who taught an automobile owner how to drive a car was the person from whom it was purchased, and the focus was more on how the vehicle was operated than the prevailing traffic laws and compliance. People learned to drive from friends or family members, and as traffic laws were enacted and enforced, organizations such as high schools and youth groups began offering driving training which shifted the focus to driving safely in accordance with the law. Excessive speed was a main concern of the authorities elected to protect us from ourselves, and speed laws evolved with the automobile.
Even the earliest automobiles were capable of exceeding the speed restrictions placed upon it, one of the major factors contributing to its popularity. The earliest automobiles were often limited by concerned communities to a speed which did not exceed that of a walking horse. Some made it illegal to pass a horse drawn conveyance travelling in the same direction. These restrictions robbed the automobile of one of its prime advantages, and the fines imposed for violating them gave birth in local and state governments to the idea of using the automobile, or rather its driver, as a revenue source. Few had ever placed speed restrictions on a horse, nor required a license plate for the vehicles the horse pulled.
As the number of cars in cities grew, the need to control their interaction with each other was obvious. William Phelps Eno, a businessman who never learned to drive a car, had for many years been creating solutions to the heavy traffic of horse drawn vehicles in New York City and other metropolitan areas. He applied this experience and knowledge to automobile traffic through a series of publications, including Fundamentals of Highway Traffic Regulation in 1926, and The Parking Problem in 1942. These and several other works by Eno served as the guidelines for many of the traffic laws, including the calculation of speed limits, which are enforced today.
One way urban streets were an innovation suggested by Eno. So were rotaries, or traffic circles, which he referred to as the gyratory traffic system. We have Eno to thank for introducing the pedestrian crosswalk, the stop sign, and safety islands in the street for pedestrian safety. Eno’s ideas for ensuring a smooth flow of vehicular traffic were adopted around the world. As governments adopted his and others ideas for traffic regulations they also enacted fines and other punishments for their violation. Today, revenues from traffic violations collected are estimated to be between 3.75 and 7.5 billion dollars annually in the United States. The range is broad because many communities do not release the amount collected from traffic fines, including it instead in other categories to mask the true amount.