The inventor of the stop sign never once drove a car

William Phelps Eno, born in New York City in 1858, is known as the “father of traffic safety.” He was an American businessman responsible for many of the earliest innovations in road safety and traffic control. Eno invented the stop sign around the dawn of the 20th century.

He developed the first traffic plans for New York, Paris, and London, and is credited with innovations such as traffic regulations, the pedestrian crosswalk, the traffic circle, the one-way street, the taxi stand, and pedestrian safety islands 1.

In 1921, he founded the Washington, D.C.-based Eno Center for Transportation, a research foundation on multimodal transportation issues that still exist. Despite his extensive knowledge of automobiles, Eno never learned how to drive and preferred riding horses. He died in Connecticut at the age of 86 in 1945 having never driven a car.