Читать книгу 60 Years Behind the Wheel - Bill Sherk - Страница 15

Engineless Car, Leamington, circa 1908

BILLY COLEMAN, OTIS DELAURIER, AND Richard Malott were photographed sitting in this car of unknown make and year with the engine out. Perhaps its parked outside a shop that rebuilds engines while you wait. The tires are white because that’s the natural colour of rubber. Black tires appeared around 1916, when carbon was added to the tires for greater strength.

When this photo was taken around 1908, the Ontario government had been licensing automobiles for five years — and with the steady increase in car ownership, the flow of money into provincial coffers was increasing too. Maybe local county governments could also get a slice of the action.

The following item, entitled “Would Regulate Auto Traffic,” appeared in the Leamington Post on December 17, 1908:

The Essex County Council has adopted a resolution asking the Ontario legislature for an act permitting each county to regulate and license automobile traffic through its territory.

The action is directed particularly against automobiles from outside the province passing through Essex county, and especially those touring from Detroit, many of which have made nuisances of themselves in every way.

As first introduced by Warden O’Neil, the resolution asked authority to charge a license fee of $25 on each automobile passing through the county. It was pointed out that if adopted in each county, say between Detroit and Niagara rivers, this would make touring prohibitive, and the cost between Detroit and Buffalo would be about $300 in license fees. The resolution was finally adopted without naming a specific amount.

Unfortunately, that news item doesn’t explain how Detroit motorists “have made nuisances of themselves in every way.” But its easy to speculate. Some motorists bypassed their muffler with an exhaust cut-out for greater acceleration and top speed, with a deafening increase in noise. And that noise was sometimes loud enough to frighten a horse into bolting — even if the horse was pulling a carriage.