Red flag laws

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[edit] History of the Red Flag Laws

~ Circa the late 19th Century, dawn of the automobile was anything but a welcomed site. Opposition from special interest groups (e.g., railroad corporations and stagecoach lines) to regulate operation of motorized vehicles, prompted English lawmakers to impose command and control policies under the guise of safety, for which to regulate behavior of, and impose nonpecuniary cost upon the motorists driving the newfangled contraptions.

~ The result was Britain's Red Flag Law, a policy requiring self-propelled vehicles to be led by a pedestrian, waiving a red flag, or carrying a lantern, to warn-off bystanders of the vehicle's approach. These Red Flag Laws precipitated incentive for engine builders to develop means of combustion alternative to the steam diligence units blamed, for startling horses and stampeding livestock.

~ The Red Flag Laws, however short-lived, today serve policymakers as a sobering reflection, of themselves, which underlines awesome implications of bad policy they whimsically spawn. Intended to appease special interest groups while simultaneously restricting free operation of steam diligence carriages, Red Flag Laws coincidently served as an incentive for manufacturers to explore and subsidize alternative, fossil fuel combustion derivatives, an indirect consequence which profoundly shaped foreign policy aparatus, of every industrialized nation on this planet.

~ In the UK, the Red Flag Laws repealed, in 1896, the internal_combustion_engine was well into its infancy (Olyslager, 7 & 23).

~ Early 20th Century, little enthusiasm existed for the coming of the automobile. In the United States, the state of Vermont passed a similar flurry of Red Flag Laws, in 1894, two years before the UK repealed theirs. Notably, the most infamous of the Red Flag Laws, circa 1896, Quaker State legislators unanimously passed a bill through both houses of the Pennsylvania state legislature, which would require all motorists piloting their horseless carriages, upon chance encounters with cattle or lifestock to (1) immediately stop the vehicle, (2) "immediately and as rapidly as possible... disassemble the automobile," and (3) "conceal the various components out of sight, behind nearby bushes" until equestrian or livestock is sufficiently passified (Olyslager, 7 & 23).

~ The bill did not survive. Pennsylvania's governor dealt it its death blow, with an executive veto.

Sources, References & Works Cited:


Bailey, T., and Kennedy, D. The American Pageant.
Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.

Olyslager, P. and Sir J. Brabham. Illustrated Motor Cars of the World.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967.

[edit] Modern Derivatives of the Red Flag Law

~ Contemporary derivative of the red flag law only exists in police tactics, whereby a highway patrolman or police officer, driving a police cruiser, or riding upon a motorcycle, positions him or herself in front of a collection of motorists, and throttle modulates (e.g., tactic known as cracking the whip), to impede the vehicles behind from achieving their natural mean velocity (e.g, rolling roadblock). A variation of this tactic, a traffic enforcent officer throttles down to an excessive high velocity in an unmarked vehicle, to lure motorists to travel into the RADAR trap stationed, just ahead, at a speed greater than the natural mean rate of velocity to which they gravitate, for the purpose of generating traffic ticket revenue (e.g., archetypical ambush).

Sources, References & Works Cited:

The Underground California Highway Patrol Handbook.