Caught doing 175 km/h on the new bridge
Two drivers caught minutes apart on the new bridge – the implication is a street race – were clocked at 175 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. Upshot: $1500 tickets and lose your licence for a week. For some people that’s chump change and a good story at a party.
JP 17:28 on 2020-07-08 Permalink
I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of cars driving extremely fast and just seeing generally bad driving behaviour. I wouldn’t mind seeing more speed bumps in residential sectors.
Yesterday, at a four-stop-sign intersection, a car stopped, but as we were crossing started driving at us, albeit not speeding toward us. It was still disconcerting. My mom is older and can’t walk as fast as me. Nevertheless, I turned around and he also stopped his car once he was past us. Not sure who started the verbal altercation, but we definitely yelled expletives at each other. I’m still not clear on what we did wrong to deserve his wrath.
I’m still mad about it. I’m actually worried about going for a walk in my neighbourhood now in case he recognizes me and starts a fight…not too many brown people in this section of Ahuntsic. I don’t think I’d recognize him at all, but he might recognize me.
And, I agree with you, Kate. A week and $1500 is really not much of a punishment or deterrent for some. I think you should lose your license for a couple of months at least. If you need it to go to work, too bad. You should have thought about that before.
Eprhaim 07:21 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
Some countries use the day-fine system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine where you are fined half your disposable income per day. Finland is sort of famous for this, but day fines only apply if you exceed the limit by 20 km/h. Others, like Switzerland, can lay criminal charges if you exceed the speed limit excessively, usually at least 40 km/h above the posted limit.
To me, criminal charges seem excessive, but day-fines, or fines multiplied by the size of the engine or value of the car should be something we can talk about when speeding over 40km/h above the posted limit. The article says that they were lost 14 points. The maximum ticket (before fees) where you lose 14 points is $990 for first offence and $1485 for fourth offence and above. SAAQ has a PDF with all the fines listed.
dwgs 07:27 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
If you lose 14 demerit points your insurance costs go up significantly as well.
Joey 09:30 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
So as I understand it the technology exists to regulate a car’s maximum speed. Is there any reason why car companies should not be regulated to cap speed at, say, 130 km/h? I get that sometimes there are legit-seeming excuses to drive above the speed limit, and there are spots where speed limits seem artificially low, fine. But is there any reason why a car should be able to exceed the posted speed limit by 50%? Not to take responsibility away from drivers, but governments/regulators are being negligent by pretending such things don’t exist. Wikipedia tells me that my electric Nissan Leaf has its speed capped at 145 km/h to prevent rapid loss of range caused by excessive battery use, so it can be done if there’s an incentive to do so – why “saving lives” isn’t an acceptable reason is beyond me.
JaneyB 10:09 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
Ontario is very severe about this and we should take a page out of their book:
6 demerit points, immediate 7 day vehicle impoundment (and costs), up to 2 year licence suspension (effective immediately), fines between $2,000 – $10,000, jail up to 6 months, and 100% + Insurance increase (which is already very high since ON has an all-private car insurance system). That’s from a first offence. Good. Incredibly, in 2019, more than 600 people were charged!
@ JP: You did nothing wrong to deserve his wrath. That’s your mind trying to make sense of a scary situation. The guy was a jerk and you just happened to be in the way. It is perfectly reasonable for you to be angry at him.
mare 10:25 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
The GPS navigation system—standard in almost all new cars—knows what the speed limit is (it uses this to calculate arrival times). As far as I know there’s no jurisdiction in the world However where this information is used to limit the speed drivers can go.
In Europe there are speed cameras everywhere, both on highways and, combined with red light cameras, at many intersections. Maximum speed enforcement is a task the cops don’t spend much time of their time on, and fines go into provincial coffers, so city cops don’t have a quota.
Because of our demerit point system and because Quebec only has rear number plates this is really hard and expensive to implement here, plus there are laws that speed traps have to be advertised.
It’s technically and legally complicated, expensive, and I think the police brotherhood is against ii too, even though traffic stops aren’t their favourite pastime. Not much incentive to change the status quo.
Uatu 10:28 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
@joey- the bullshit excuse for it is that the driver might need access to high speed in case of emergency. A load of crap IMHO
Kate 10:35 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
Joey, cars are sold partly on fantasy – look at all the commercials showing fast driving on open empty roads – and one of the fantasies is you can make the car go as fast as you like. It would work against this fantasy to have to add in small print “Car has been maxed out at 130 km/h”.
Dhomas 10:36 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
I had a similar experience as JP just last week. A driver in a pickup truck overtook another car on a residential street by driving through the bike lane, because the first driver had the audacity of driving the speed limit of 30. The speed limit is 30 because it’s next to a park. There was a kid on a scooter walking his dog in the bike lane. I was walking toward the park with my 3 kids, and I yelled at the driver, who had his window open, “t’es pressé?! C’t’une zone de 30! Y a des enfants qui jouent!”. I got a nice middle finger and cursing as a response. The finger stayed out until he turned the corner on a very long block and the stream of expletives only ceased when he was out of earshot. Some people are just assholes…
I also noticed a lot more street racing and excessive speed, both on city streets and on the highway. It flared up while there was no one on the roads at the beginning of the pandemic, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten back to normal since then.