Episode 2 of 2
Implementation of Speed Limits
- When
- 1865
- Where
- Public Highways
The Act enforced a 2 mph limit in towns and 4 mph in the country for road locomotives.
Section 4 of the Act imposed these specific speed limits for road locomotives. Earlier legislation had already set speed limits for locomotives, including 5 mph in towns and 10 mph in the country, so the 1865 Act's limits were not the first statutory speed restrictions in Britain. The limits were retained by the Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act 1878, which repealed the red flag requirement but kept the speed restrictions.
Sources
- Locomotive Acts Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-30
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.