It is undoubtedly because the cinema and car both came into being at the end of the 19th century that early motion pictures devoted a significant place to this new means of locomotion. George Méliès (1861-1938), for example, shot in 1899 Automaboulisme et autorité (The Clown and the Automobile). Ferdinand Zecca (1864-1947), Pathé's official filmmaker, associated the car with the idea of an accident in 1905, in Automobile et cul-de-jatte, (Motorcar and Cripple), playing himself the role of the dismembered victim. Perhaps Zecca had seen the Hepworth's film?

Cecil M. Hepworth (1874-1953) was one of the great pioneers of British cinema. His career spanned nearly a quarter of a century, resisting even W.W.I. In 1889, he founded his company, Hepworth and Co. Producer, director as well as inventor and film theoretician, Hepworth notably shot news footage: in 1901, the funeral of Queen Victoria and coronation of King Edward VII quickly made this 27-year-old famous.

In How to Stop a Motor Car (1902), Cecil Hepworth played the driver of the automobile, while his father, the celebrated magic lanternist T.C. Hepworth, took on the role of the inspector. This short special-effects comedy was based, much like Rêve des marmitons (Scullions' Dream) by Segundo de Chomón (1871-1929), on the dismemberment and dislocation of the human body. It was Percy Stow (1876-1919), a specialist of fiction and special-effects films at Hepworth and Co, who directed this picture. In 1903, Hepworth and Stow were to codirect the first screen adaptation of the famous novels by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), in their short entitled Alice in Wonderland. In 1904, Stow left Hepworth's firm to create his own company, Clarendon Film.

The original music for this film was composed in 2011 by Jean-François Bossaert in the context of the partnership with the CNSMDP (Paris Conservatory of Dance and Music).