Slaloming through Bucharest traffic: the surprisingly gentle beginnings of today's wildness. The rules of the draconian “Traffic Regulations” of old
“Oh, what a time for Bucharest traffic, once it traveled at 15 km per hour, “that is, the speed of a horse”. What the drastic “Regulation for the circulation of motor vehicles” stipulated. Photo credit: Retromobil Club Romania.
In Bucharest, there are now at least 1.5 million registered cars in the city. Last month, the interim mayor said that there are, to be exact, 1.7 million
Now, a leap in time: at the beginning of the 20th century, in Bucharest you could count on your fingers those who had a car and dared to drive it.
And the city was driven at 15 km per hour, “that is, the speed of a horse”.
The automobile appears in Bucharest in 1889, brought by Baron Barbu Bellu from France, a 4 HP Peugeot, then Dr. Tomescu buys another such vehicle from a London exhibition, according to the “Encyclopedia of Physical Education and Sport in Romania”.
The first motor vehicle registered in Bucharest was brought to Romania by the engineer and traveler who went around the world, George Bazil Assan, the son of the industrialist who built, in 1853, the first mill powered by a steam engine.
A story from the era tells us that Prince George Valentin Bibescu, also a pioneer of motoring, wanted his car to be the first to be registered in Bucharest, only that Bazil Assan's vehicle had already received Number 1. However, the Bucharest Prefecture solved the delicate problem and registered Prince Bibescu's car with Number 0.
There were times when representatives of the Bucharest elites – princes, boyars, industrialists – were the pioneers of progress who copied everything they had seen in Europe.
And, as the cars multiplied, the ancestor of today's Highway Code appeared, a first normative act intended to regulate the movement of motor vehicles.
The “Regulation for the movement of motor vehicles” was called, it was the law by which motorists were not allowed to disturb carriages or frighten horses or passers-by and it came into force on October 11, 1913.
Published in the Official Gazette, the document established, among other things, the maximum speed at which one could drive on public roads and the minimum age at which young people had the right to obtain a driver's license.
Read, in B365.ro, about the traffic in Old Bucharest and find out how strict the regulations were.
