first drunk driver – Ingliando

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.”