On this day, a 25-year-old London taxi driver, George Smith, became the first person in recorded history to be arrested for drunk driving. Smith was one of just 12 men chosen to drive for Walter C. Bersey’s London Electrical Cab Company whose cabs had only been in service for about three weeks at the time of his arrest. The arrest was carried out by by Police Constable Russell who saw Smith swerving from one side of the road to the other, driving across the pavement, and crashing into 165, New Bond Street. When he realised that he was not being charged with speeding but with being drunk, Smith admitted that he had drunk two or three glasses of beer. He was fined 20 shillings and told, “You motor-car drivers ought to be very careful, for if anything happens to you – well, the police have a very happy knack of stopping a runaway horse, but to stop a motor is a very different thing.”
Puoi trovare altre brevi notizie storiche QUI
Your comments are always very welcome.
Ingliando 
At the time DUI had not been “invented” because drugs ( laudanum, opium) were a prerogative of artists in general, not of cab drivers
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They were still early days! 😉
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Did you know that George Smith, after being fined, went into business for himself in the car-sharing business by founding his own company, and his nephew sold it in 2009 to Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp who later founded the now famous UBER.
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Can UBER-lieve that?
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Absolutely! And with the proceeds, George Smith opened a nice pub in the City where he gave a huge discount to those who then had to drive.
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Almost as generous as Coco Gauff!
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