Driver Education in Tennessee Public Schools: An Appraisal of Administration, Instruction and Personnel

Since primitive travel caused few traffic problems, simple, unwritten rules of the road remained sufficient for many centuries. It is interesting to note, however, that in 396 B.C. the Romans felt compelled to write traffic laws for the city of Rome. One of these early ordinances written in 205 B.C. state that women were forbidden to drive vehicles within the city of Rome. During the rule of Julius Caesar congested traffic conditions necessitated a regulation that vehicles could not enter the city during business hours and in 50 B.C. a Roman law was passed against "trucking."

Traffic regulations changed little up to modern times and in 1900 in the United States the methods of handling traffic were essentially the say as they had been in Rome some 2,000 years ago. However, with the arrival of the automobile new traffic problems demanded new solutions.