Cars: killing people since 1869

August 11, 2022 12:32 AM

Who Was the First Person Ever to Die in a Car Crash? (Medium)

Reference links from the article, with pullquotes I thought were interesting:

* Almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day, according to the campaigning charity RoadPeace which is marking National Road Victim Month. (bbc)

* Who Was The First Person to Die in a Car Crash? (youtube)

* The Locomotive Act was already in force since 1865 which stipulated that a vehicle should travel at a maximum speed of 2 mph through a town with a man carrying a red flag proceeding 60 yards in front of the vehicle but it is suggested that this safty procedure was not followed on this occassion? (myvehicle.ie)

* Ward was an active naturalist and astronomer, working hard to carve out a place for herself in the overwhelmingly male world of Victorian science. She was also raising eight children more or less alone. (the atlantic)

posted by aniola (29 comments total)

The BBC article actually says more about the rules around cars in the red flag section at its end, and the last two links focus more on Mary Ward.
posted by aniola at 12:37 AM on August 11, 2022

My great-grandfather’s first wife was the first person to die in a car crash in Iceland. My great-grandfather was driving and, rightly or wrongly, blamed himself. But his second wife was my great-grandmother, so I wouldn’t exist without that car crash, which can be an odd thing to contemplate.
posted by Kattullus at 12:52 AM on August 11, 2022 [24 favorites]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Acts
posted by aniola at 12:54 AM on August 11, 2022

That is a tragic but interesting origin story!
posted by aniola at 1:01 AM on August 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day

I read somewhere recently that there are 100 deaths per day on American roads, so that means the USA has 4.25% of the worlds population but just 2.5% of the road deaths.
posted by Lanark at 2:15 AM on August 11, 2022

Fuck cars.
posted by talking leaf at 3:03 AM on August 11, 2022 [19 favorites]

For all its faults, the USA has decently effective safety standards. I've seen where post-crash American and Japanese cars end up in the Caucasus - I was definitely much less confident in my ability to survive a crash in a Prius taxi that was missing its entire front bumper.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 3:26 AM on August 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

For all its faults, the USA has decently effective safety standards.

They've been chipped away at and eroded.

Pick-up trucks and SUVs are higher than ever, with worse visibility to see pedestrians. Vehicles are larger, increasing their lethality to pedestrians. "Self-driving" vehicle companies have not been prosecuted for performing unlicensed tests on public roads and endangering the public.

The USA could be doing a lot better.
posted by explosion at 5:08 AM on August 11, 2022 [13 favorites]

Obligatory: "begs the question" doesn't mean "makes you wonder."
posted by emelenjr at 5:34 AM on August 11, 2022 [12 favorites]

The first "car accident" involved the Cugnot vehicle from the late 1700s, which ran a bit out of control and damaged a retaining wall.

There's a replica vehicle running today, and it's steampunk-a-riffic.
posted by gimonca at 5:42 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

For all its faults, the USA has decently effective safety standards.
Standards schmandards. There are other variables, like road-quality, driver-quality. The WHO counts on road fatalities by country put USA mid-range.
1) per 100,000 vehicles
< 5/100,000 = Norway, Switzerland, Sweden
> 3000!/100,000 = Rwanda, Togo, CAR, Somalia
USA = 14/100,000 between Poland and Lithuania
2) per 100,000 people
<3/100,000 = Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, UK, Ireland
>30/100,000 = Liberia, DR Congo, CAR, Tanzania, Rwanda
USA = 12/100,000 between Turkey and Chile
FWIW Road traffic injuries typically clock in at 20x fatalities; while "serious injuries" are typically 2x fatalities.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:12 AM on August 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Obligatory: "begs the question" doesn't mean "makes you wonder."

Outside of academic philosophy, it’s used to mean ‘raises the question’ most of the time. Personally, I consider the phrase skunked- you can’t use it without ambiguity or annoying people, and consequently try to follow Mark Liberman’s advice:

Never use the phrase yourself — use "assume the conclusion" or "raise the question", depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others.

Anyway, let’s try and get this locomotive back on the road.

*marches forward ahead of thread carrying flag marked noise/derail/other*
posted by zamboni at 6:21 AM on August 11, 2022 [34 favorites]

Who was the first person to ever die in a car crash?

I do not know, but the first person ever to be hit by a car was John Lillison, England's greatest one-armed poet.
posted by cocotine at 6:23 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I read somewhere recently that there are 100 deaths per day on American roads, so that means the USA has 4.25% of the worlds population but just 2.5% of the road deaths.

Many poorer countries have very high rates of road deaths for fairly obvious reasons, but among its peers, the US is definitely an outlier with twice the rate of road deaths per person compared to Canada and four times as high compared to the UK.
posted by ssg at 6:25 AM on August 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

Family lore says my great-great-grandmother was the first person to die (selflink) in a car accident in North Dakota, but 1915 seem too late, someone else surely must've been killed by a car before then.

(She was poshumously the grandmother to the first set of quadruplets in North Dakota; I guess in a state of 600,000 residents it wasn't hard to be first at a bunch of things)
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:41 AM on August 11, 2022

Many poorer countries have very high rates of road deaths for fairly obvious reasons

One of which being that major car manufacturers remove or reduce safety in cars sold in developing countries. Even living in a mid-income country ten years ago, I had a new car (2010 or 2011 model year) that had zero airbags.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:46 AM on August 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

just 2.5% of the road deaths.

Prior to 1869, there were 0% road deaths from cars anywhere in the world.
posted by aniola at 8:41 AM on August 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

prior to 1869

That reminds me of this map
posted by DreamerFi at 8:48 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Re road death standards, the Aussies have a good dashboard comparing OECD countries including the US. The US is second last per capita ahead of Colombia, third last per vehicle ahead of Chile and Korea, and in the bottom quarter per distance travelled, ahead of a lot of Central/Eastern Europe (who have better public transport, so people don't have to drive everywhere).

I remember chatting some years ago with a researcher at a poster session, she was researching road deaths in provincial Thailand. A big part of the problem there (and I'm guessing in other countries with similar economic development) is in medical care. After a crash in the US or any peer country (see above), usually an ambulance will show up in a few minutes, and it'll have paramedics, and so on. The first responders she was describing in Thailand took a lot longer to get there (maybe 90 minutes?), had much more limited training, and lacked basic medical equipment like a spine board to transport patients on.

Road deaths isn't just a measure of how safe the roads, cars and drivers in a country are; it's that multiplied by the amount that people drive (both in places that are poor enough that most people can't afford to drive, and places that are rich enough that people aren't forced to drive to get around) and the quality of emergency medical response.
posted by Superilla at 8:55 AM on August 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

TFA isn't great; the author has the irritating habit of using one sentence per paragraph, and the account of Ward's death is missing a bunch of details which are in this link.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:48 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

aniola: Prior to 1869, there were 0% road deaths from cars anywhere in the world.

Not to mention terrible cell phone reception.
posted by dr_dank at 11:48 AM on August 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Who is going to be the last person to die in a car accident? Better asked, when is that going to be?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 1:11 PM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

How many horses killed in 1868
How many people died in train, steamship, and horse and carriage accidents in 1868.
In world war one, 8 million horses, donkeys and mules were killed.

The first person in America to die in a car was Henry Hale Bliss in 1899 fully 30 years after the first steamcar victim.

The charging stations for electric cars on Cass ave.in Detroit had several deaths from shock, the first being next door to my great grand father's charging station.
posted by clavdivs at 4:06 PM on August 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

In Harrow on the Hill, in north London, there's a plaque commemorating the first recorded motor accident in Great Britain involving the death of the driver, in 1899. But the plaque is wrong, it's not quite the first: that dubious distinction goes to Henry Lindfield, who died in 1898 when his car crashed into a tree.

By a curious coincidence, Harrow on the Hill is also the last resting place of John Port, one of the first people in Britain to be killed in a railway accident. His gravestone commemorates the event in verse:

Bright rose the morn, and vigorous rose poor Port.
Gay on the Train he used his wonted sport.
Ere noon arrived his mangled form they bore,
With pain distorted, and o’erwhelmed with gore;
When evening came to close the fatal day,
A mutilated corpse the sufferer lay.

posted by verstegan at 4:57 PM on August 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

"A handbill promoting an 1865 steam buggy exhibition proclaimed steamers “the most wonderful invention of modern times....Massachusetts machinist Sylvester Roper built at least seven steam carriages and two steam motorcycles. They weren’t considered practical vehicles but became popular attractions at circuses and fairs...in 1896, "He had a (fatal) heart attack at age 73 while riding one of his steam motorcycles.
posted by clavdivs at 6:21 PM on August 11, 2022

So, Superilla, what you're saying is that an important reason cars don't kill even more people in the US is our relatively robust emergency services?
posted by aquamvidam at 6:22 PM on August 11, 2022

My reaction to hearing people talk about car collisions and crashes as "accidents" is typically "no, they KNEW. You can't get into a car in this day and age and NOT know that someone might die." But with these first deaths, I suppose it might be reasonable to call them accidents.
posted by aniola at 6:33 PM on August 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I remember reading somewhere about early auto accidents happening because people who were accustomed to driving horse-drawn buggies had developed the automatic muscle habit of bracing their feet on the floor to pull back hard on the reins to stop the horses. But in a car, if you panic and brace your foot on a gas pedal, an accident is unavoidable.

(I associate this story with an essay I read online about Laura Ingalls Wilder, so it might have been Almanzo? but it was definitely not in the Little House books and I can't find the source now.)
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:49 PM on August 11, 2022

I suppose it might be reasonable to call them accidents

On the other hand, if that were true, why the Locomotive Acts? I take it back. I think people knew cars were dangerous before they had ever killed anyone.
posted by aniola at 8:15 AM on August 12, 2022