Parable - 70 - HD

Probably even before that. Probably in nomadic tribes, the scions of the ruling families would run beasts of burden to exhaustion.

You don't *even* need "some idiot" to be on the road in any sense, and you don't need alcohol involved. Carriages are/were notably difficult to turn. I mean, they weren't harder to turn than they looked like they'd be, but stop on a dime and turn readily they did not. At around 3-5mph or so, their turn radius is similar to a car, as demonstrated by the horse drawn carriages around here navigating the streets. But that's not their top speed; they slow down to that speed or maybe a bit less to be able to turn. Note that these carriages are pretty much never in a real hurry; they're strictly a tourism thing. Add in to the mix impatient nobles, and you have carriages overdriving their visibility range, without the drivers necessarily realizing it. They're also making enough noise that they can't make out the noise of the other carriages.

Some Ed

"I'm not sure carriage-wrecks would really be a thing." Oh, they were, they were, judging from period works like The Count Of Monte Cristo. Rich young hotbloods have been street racing since streets and wheels were a thing.

Ed Abrams (aka The Superdak)

About all you need for a collision is "some traffic" and "some idiot"... who may be inebriated. I think the modern drunk driving laws came about because of the increased lethality of motor vehicles.

Ardent Slacker

Dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

AstroChaos

D'awww !

ZekeStaright

Define "high speed". By our standards? certainly not. By carriage standards? I imagine so, given the general absence of traffic laws at the time (look at almost any footage of traffic from India for an idea of what happens when the drivers on the road are more interested in going places than sharing the road safely).

Fenrir

They used to use words like catastrophe or cataclysm, (Glares at Dan for ignoring the pun potential)

IvyReed

Just plain "wreck"?

Adama

Rhoda looks especially puppy-like in panel 3.

Adama

"horse kerfuffle"?

McZed

But were carriages prone to crashing into each other at high speed?

Stephen Gilberg

I wonder what metaphor English speakers actually used before "train wreck."

Stephen Gilberg

Carriages were *incredibly* prone to wrecking. Remember how, in Oregon Trail, you needed to bring a bunch of extra axels, since yours would break so much? Before they had rubber wheels to absorb a lot of the roads' inconsistencies, the wooden wheels and axels would break often.

coredumperror