Saturday 27th August 1904

Newport, Rhode Island, imposed the first jail sentence in the US for a speeding violation. Judge Darius Baker imposed the offender to a sentence of five days for traveling at 15 miles per hour. A jail term was especially harsh because automobile traffic laws were still new. Although laws against galloping horses and speeding carriages had been on the books in America since 1678, the first automobile traffic code wasn’t implemented until 1903,, when New York introduced a two-page book of regulations. Early traffic regulations varied drastically between states, some having no speed limits at all.