25 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Cars

 

This list was compiled from various sites around the web:

1) The first cars did not have steering wheels, so drivers steered with a lever.
2) The New York City Police Department used bicycles to pursue speeding motorists in 1898.
3) The first speeding ticket was issued in 1902.
4) In 1916, 55 percent of the cars in the world were Model T Fords.
5) The first gas gauge appeared in cars in 1922.
6) In 1923, 173 new inventions by women for cars had been reported among these were a carburetor and an electric engine starter.
7) The first car radio was invented in 1929.
8) Buick introduced the first electric turn signals in 1938.
9) The Peanuts characters were first animated in 1957 for a Ford Fairlaine automobile commercial.
10) Most American car horns beep in the key of F.
11) On average there is about 3,000 feet of electrical wiring in every car.
12) If you drove at 100mph for four years you would still not cover every stretch of road in the USA.
13) Car airbags explode at 200 miles per hour.
14) British Petroleum makes a profit of £3,800.00 per second!
15) On average a human being spends two weeks of their entire lives waiting for traffic lights to change.
16) The first person to be killed in an auto accident in the United States was Henry H. Bliss, a 68-year-old real estate broker. On September 14, 1899, in New York City, Mr. Bliss stepped from a streetcar, turned to assist a woman passenger, and was hit by a cab.
17) The 1st automobile racetrack in the US was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway which consists of 3 million cobblestones.
18) In 2003, 17,013 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes in the United States. This amounts to one death almost every half-hour.
19) The city with the most Rolls Royce’s per capita is Hong Kong.
20) The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At the time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
21) The number of cars recycled in 1997 alone – nearly 13 million – would cause a traffic jam circling the Earth more than one and three quarter times.
22) Recycling just one car saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.
23) Virtually every car taken off the road today is recycled – thanks to the steel and iron content!
24) It takes about 45 seconds to shred the average automobile into fist-sized pieces of steel for recycling.
25) The automobile is the most recycled consumer product in the world today.