From 1836 to 1895, the Road Locomotive Act (also known as the Red Flag Act) in England required that any self-propelled vehicle be preceded by a man carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. It also placed high taxes on steam-powered vehicles. This regulation, by essentially limiting the speed of such vehicles to that of a person and otherwise making them impractical, inhibited the development of automobiles for 60 years in Great Britain. While previously Great Britain had been in the forefront of the development of automobiles and several steam coaches had been built, over the next six decades the French, Germans, and Americans would take the lead.