- Traffic lights were born 18 years before the cars
The world's first car was built in 1886, and the first traffic lights were built in 1868, 18 years earlier than cars. In September 1868, outside the House of Parliament, London, England, where horse-drawn carriages often hit pedestrians, They were proposed by the railway engineer J. P. Knight. So the world’s first traffic lights were born at the cross of Bridge Street and Great George Street.
The difference from today’s traffic light is that this traffic light was mounted on a 6.6-meter-high iron pillar and consisted of red and green rotating square glass lights. The color conversion requires a special person to hold a long pole to operate, but because the traffic lights used gas-making fuel that can easily cause an accidental explosion and killed the operator, so the world’s first traffic lights only worked for 23 days.
- France was the first country to use license plates and driving licenses.
Although Germany was the country that invented cars, the country that first used car license plates and driver's licenses was France. In 1893, the Paris police clearly stipulated: "All cars must have a metal license plate on the left side of its body, with the owner’s name, address and registration number printed on it, the plate number also need to be written on the glass of its taillights."
Another regulation is that drivers must pass the test and get a driver's license before they are qualified to drive. The test content included driving skills, vehicle construction principles and repair skills. People under the age of 21 were not allowed to get a driver's license, and the police also had the right to cancel the driver's license according to the situation, which should be the earliest "revocation of driver’s license".
- There are almost no highways in Russia.
Until 2012, there was only one highway in St. Petersburg in Russia, with the whole journey of only 46 kilometers. The charges vary from 10-100 rubles.
If you look at Russia's territory closely, you’ll find most of its areas are in Siberia where there’s not a lot of people. It really doesn't make any sense to build highways there. Moreover, since it is always covered by snow and ice, the maintenance will be extremely expensive. Secondly, Russia is very large but also sparsely populated, the demand for highways is actually not very high.
- car doors are not allowed to be locked in the Arctic
It is not because there are no thieves there in the Arctic, but because there lives a giant predator- the polar bear, which often attacks humans, and on the boundless glacier without any shelter, once a person encounters a polar bear, it is the safest way to get into a car that happened to pass by or parked aside.
- Lexus LS460 is the first car with 8AT.
When it comes to the 8AT transmission, what is the first brand that comes to your mind? BMW? Audi? These two manufacturers are indeed the most widely equipped with 8AT now, but the first car to be equipped with 8AT is actually Lexus, with the specific model of 2007 LS460.
As the flagship model of Lexus, the 8AT equipped on the LS460 was code-named AA80E. It was jointly developed by Aisin and Toyota. The shift time was only 350 milliseconds. Although the shift time of the ZF 8AT widely used by BMW today has been deducted to 200 milliseconds, it was really impressive that Toyota could do this nearly 20 years ago.
- Who is Mercedes?
Many brand founders like to use their own name to name the brand, but “Mercedes” in "Mercedes-Benz" actually has nothing to do with the founder.
When Karl Benz founded Mercedes-Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach founded Daimler Motors, and more than 100 years ago, an Austro-Hungarian businessman named Emil Jellinek from Daimler The company bought a lot of parts to assemble the car, and he named the car after his 10-year-old daughter, Mercedes, which won him a lot of championships in subsequent races. The name Mercedes was also widely recognized
Inspired by this, Daimler Motors officially started to use "Mercedes" as their product name in the second year. After that, in 1926, Daimler and Benz officially merged, and the combined name became “Mercedes-Benz”.
