Breathalyzers had not yet been invented, but in 1897 the first person in history to be arrested for drunk driving was an English taxi driver.

The breathalyzer was invented 70 years ago, and came into use in the 1950s. But the primer recorded case of a drunk driver at the wheel It happened much earlier: almost 130 years ago specifically.

What is also curious is that he did it at the controls of an electric taxi. Yes, an electric taxi in 1897, when cars still looked like carriages. Also striking was the very low fine he was given for committing this then unprecedented infraction.

The first fine for drunk driving: 20 shillings. Today it can be as high as 2,500 pounds.

The driver in question was George Smitha 25-year-old London taxi driver. On 10 September 1897, at the wheel of one of the London Electrical Cab Company’s experimental taxis, he crashed into a building on New Bond Street.

After the accident, he was arrested by the police. Smith He admitted that he was driving under the influence of alcoholwhich was understood as the cause. The Marlborough Street Police Court imposed a sentence on him fine of 20 shillings.

To put this amount into context, a shilling was equivalent to one-twentieth of a pound sterling. Today we would be talking about one pound in total and therefore little more than one euro at today’s exchange rate. Perhaps it was too low even for the time. Currently in Spain the minimum fine for drunk driving is 500 euros and can even be a criminal offence, depending on the amount. In the UK it can be up to £2,500 and can also lead to prison sentences or withdrawal of driving licence.

Unfortunately, people still get drunk while driving. Despite the fact that the United Kingdom is one of the European countries with the most expensive fines for drunk driving, In 2021, 240 fatal accidents were recorded for driving under the influence of alcohol. According to figures from the British Department for Transport, an average of 200 people die in traffic accidents due to this reason every year.

Foto: London Science Museum

An electric taxi more than a century ago? Smith was one of 12 taxi drivers chosen to provide service with the electric taxis of la London Electrical Cab Company de Walter C. BerseySpecifically, at the time of his arrest, this precocious drunk driver had been picking up and dropping off passengers in this zero-emission London Cab for 22 days.

These electric taxis, called hummingbirds because of the shrill sound of their engines, did not last long on the streets of London: they were in operation for only two years, from 1897 to 1899. And they were not exactly profitable.

The reason? Their tremendous weight. If an electric car suffers from this problem today because of the battery, imagine in the 19th century: it added no less than 711 kilos to the total weight of these taxis, in which the tires quickly wore out or even the wooden rims burst. Only in the first year they were in operation, they made a hole of 6,200 pounds.

From walking in a straight line to the first breathalyzer. Since Smith was the first drunk driver, it is understood that the officers recognized him purely for his symptoms or perhaps for the smell he must have given off when he got out of the crashed taxi.

And after this first case, in the 19th century, police officers determined drunkenness by evaluating, for example, balance, coordination or eye movement. That is, if physical abilities were impaired. This could obviously be very subjective.

Already in the first decades of the 20th century, blood alcohol analysis was developed, but no tests were carried out on site. The closest thing to the breathalyzer was the ‘balloon test’ developed by Rolla N. Harger, a biochemist at Indiana University. The problem was that the results were not very precise and only a doctor could perform this embryonic test.

In the In the 1950s, the first breathalyzer finally arrived: In 1954, the American Robert F. Borkenstein invented the first reliable test. Borkenstein, a criminologist photographer, He found the key with a device portable, chemical-based test to calculate the amount of alcohol in the blood.

The driver was made to blow into a small tube and his breath reached a vial containing a solution of sulphuric acid (50%), potassium dichromate (0.25%) and silver nitrate (0.25%) as a catalyst. The result was given by two photocells, which changed colour depending on the concentration of alcohol in the blood. The concept is practically the same as today.