Kent's roads are often the centre of discussion whether it be Operation Brock and Stack, potholes or speed limits, but not many know the very first speeding ticket in Britain was issued in the county.

Sean McPolin re-tells the story of historic motorist Walter Arnold who was pulled over and fined by police 125 years ago.

Mr Arnold inherited the family engineering business William Arnold and Sons, which was based in East Peckham, Tunbridge Wells, before joining forces with Henry Hewetson and creating Arnold Motor Carriage Co of London.

On January 28, 1896, he was stopped while driving a German-made Benz "horseless carriage" which he had imported to Britain the previous year.

He was hurtling down the road at 8mph which was four times the legal limit of 2mph and pulled over after a policeman was forced to chase him on a bicycle.

Mr Arnold was taken to the Tonbridge police court where he faced three additional charges of using a locomotive without a horse, having fewer than three people in charge of the vehicle and for not having his name and address on the vehicle.

As well as breaking the speed limit Mr Arnold failed to have a man with a red flag walking ahead of the carriage which was required after the Red Flag Act of 1885.

The Kent driver is now in the Guinness World Records Book and was charged £4 7s in total, which is around £260 in today's money. Of that fine 10 shillings was for the speeding charge.

To paint a picture of how fast Mr Arnold was driving at the time, Olympic and World Champion sprinter Usain Bolt's top speed when he broke the 100m record in 2009 was 27.8mph.

The vehicle was also going just slower than a chicken which can reach speeds of 9mph, but faster than a mobility scooter which reaches 4mph.

Just 10 months after Mr Arnold was caught travelling four times the speed limit the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896 was brought in on November 14.

The new act created a new category of vehicle - light locomotives - which were exempt from the three crew member rule and were subject to a higher speed limit of 14mph.

1896 also signalled the first edition of the London to Brighton car run which celebrated the recently passed highways acts.

The run was stopped soon after its inaugural event but was staged again in 1927 and has run annually, except during the Second World War due to petrol rationing.

Walter Arnold isn't the only recognisable name to have sped on the streets of Kent, as a document from the Kent library and history centre, in James Whatman Way, Maidstone, shows there is a record of Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle having broken the law in the county.

A ledger from 1905 detailed how he was caught driving his car at more than 20mph in the Folkestone area.

A motorist was recorded speeding at 200mph on the A2

Sir Arthur was fined £10 and 9 shillings, which in today's money is more than £800 and would've bought you one cow back then.

Of course, speeding was much harder to record a century ago.

Now, the force has a number of strategies to stop motorists from going too fast, including officers on the roads, mobile police units, static cameras and volunteers who run Speedwatch groups.

Exactly 135 years ago tomorrow German engineer Carl Benz applied for the a patent for his Modell 3 Benz which is thought to be the first motorcar on record.

However, it wasn't until 1895 that a car reached British Highways, with a man named Evelyn Ellis taking to the roads in June in a Panhard et Levassor he had imported from abroad.

It was initially claimed that a Benz Velo, which was imported by Walter Arnold's partner Henry Hewetson in November 1894 was the first in Britain, but it's now believed this didn't happen until later in 1895.

By the end of the year there were around 15 cars on Britain's roads, a figure which leapt to approximately 800 within five years.

Just six decades later and the world's first supercar - a high performance luxury vehicle - hit the streets.

The Lamborghini Miura was produced between 1966 and 1973 and could hit top speeds of around 160mph.

We wouldn't even be having these conversations about the speed of luxury cars or Walter Arnold's law-breaking if it wasn't for the UK speed limit which was introduced in the early 1860s.

The very first Locomotive Act in 1861 created the first numeric speed limits for "mechanically propelled vehicles" which saw a limit of 10mph in Britain on open roads in towns, which was reduced to 2mph in towns and 4mph in rural areas thanks to the 1865 Red Flag Act.

As the years progress speed limits have deterred many from breaking the law, but not everyone.

In 2019 a group of villagers revealed 133,000 drivers broke the speed limit while zooming through Staplehurst, near Maidstone, in a single week.

Volunteers monitored four roads - Maidstone Road, Station Road, High Street and Cranbrook Road - which have limits of 30mph and 40mph and found that 162 drivers were travelling at more than 70mph.

The shocking figures were slammed by national road safety charity Brake, who said: "These figures are quite simply astounding.

"It is incredibly concerning to see so many speeding drivers putting not only themselves, but all other road users, at serious risk."

Mr Arnold's 8mph may have seemed extraordinary at the time but as the years have progressed and cars evolved Kent has seen some much, much higher.

Just last week one motorist in Rochester was clocked at doing 109mph while they were "on their way to a funeral".

Last year a video emerged online of an Audi appearing to speed at more than 200mph along the A2.

Recent figures showed the number of drivers caught speeding in the county during lockdown rose by 53% year-on-year.

During April last year Kent Police officers enforced 10,828 speeding offences during April, which put the county's force as only one of three across England and Wales to record a year-on-year increase.

The speed of the fastest driver caught in Kent also rose, from 126mph in April 2019 to 137mph in April last year.

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