06/22/2026
In 1896…
In August 1896, 44-year-old Bridget Driscoll stepped onto a street in Crystal Palace, London, and unknowingly walked into the history books. As she crossed the grounds, an experimental horseless carriage belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Car Company struck her down, making her the world's very first recorded pedestrian car fatality.
The vehicle’s driver, Arthur Edsell, was traveling at a mere four miles per hour. Because automobiles were a bizarre novelty, Driscoll was reportedly transfixed by the strange machine, freezing in panic as it approached. At her inquest, coroner William Percy Morrison famously hoped "this sort of thing may never happen again."
