The signaling officers drew crowds of pedestrian onlookers. They devised a signaling method to unravel traffic "tangles" and "blockades," both terms from the horse and buggy days.Īs Detroit Traffic Superintendent William Rutledge described in an annual report, "The upraised hand is the signal to stop, and the swinging hand across the body the signal to start."
This was abolished and replaced with the Traffic Squad - one sergeant and 12 officers who rotated in four-man shifts at Woodward and State Street. Nine older policemen were assigned to help people, typically elderly, cross the now-treacherous downtown intersections. The initial police effort was called the Broadway Squad, copying a program started in New York City.
However, the weakness of this strategy became clear as traffic got "thicker and thicker" as it was described, and the police struggled to keep even major streets safe and slow. In one afternoon in 1911 police hauled in 450 people before Recorders Court Judge John Connolly on speeding charges. If drivers broke the law, the punishment was severe, with heavy fines, jail sentences, and charges of manslaughter and murder when pedestrians were hit and killed. (An extreme solution was enacted in England, where in small towns the law required the automobilist to notify a village constable, who would walk in front of the car waving two red warning flags while the driver followed slowly behind.) But the "normal" speed from the horse age was so slow that automobile owners had difficulty keeping their cars from stalling out. Politicians, police and judges debated how to control them: What was the law of the road, and who was guilty or innocent in cases of lawsuit and litigation?Īfter all, the automobile in the 1910s was not yet considered an essential mode of transportation, and it was their speeding that confused pedestrians, frightened horses and tore up the roadways. Just seven years later, in 1916, there were 2.25 million. Statistics kept by the nascent Automobile Club of America recorded that in 1909 there were 200,000 motorized vehicles in the United States. "An automobile containing a bridal couple, several wedding guests, three children, and many bottles of liquor rounded the corner from Labelle Avenue onto Woodward Sunday evening and turned turtle going at least 40 miles an hour." - Detroit Free Press, June 29, 1914Įarly vehicles were terrifyingly loud for horses and their owners, compounding the problem as their numbers grew quickly. A driver training bulletin called "Sportsmanlike Driving" had to explain velocity and centrifugal force and why when drivers took corners at high speed their cars skidded or sometimes "turned turtle" (flipped over).
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