Mounties in Saskatchewan recently clocked a car going 202 km/hr.
Speed limit is 100 km/hr.
They double-checked their radar to make sure it was accurate, then set off in pursuit.
Car was being driven by someone who had “recently entered Canada” from the United States, and thought he was just driving a bit over the speed limit of 100 mph. The speed signs had that big 100, after all.
Mounties did a “friendly” and gave the driver a warning, instead of the standard ticket, which based on the speed, would have been $2,055.
On a related note: As a metric supporter visiting Nova Scotia about 25 years ago, I asked how far away is Halifax. I already knew the answer. The purpose of my question was to see whether they answered in miles or kilometers. “About 20 minutes” was the reply.
At over 200 km/h, an easy stunting/racing/excessive speeding ticket. Glad to see the cops weren’t dicks, and I hope the dangerous speeding idiot stops endangering everyone on the road.
California has what’s called the basic speed law, which makes it illegal to drive faster than is safe, regardless of the posted limit. For instance, you aren’t allowed to drive at 65 MPH on a freeway if it’s raining so hard you can’t see very far ahead.
Does Canada have the same thing? Driving over 100 MPH is nuts, no matter what the sign says.
Driving laws are typically provincial, so can’t speak for all of Canada, but in my province, there is an offence of “driving unsafe for the road conditions”. If there’s a blizzard on, you drive much more slowly.
There’s also a federal criminal offence offence of “dangerous driving”, which might have applied if the fellow had got in an accident.
What I know is that in rural areas the local police let things go by as long as you don’t cause accident.
I remember a peninsula in the finnish lake district where over the strait was ferry service and in the other side was county line eg. different police district. The consensus was that as long as you stayed on the peninsula everything goes. The ferry pilot won’t let drunk driver over the strait and on the other end it’s not my problem field existed. Then they built bridge over the strait and everything changed.
That’s surprising— when we took a trip to Niagara Falls from the Metro Detroit area years ago, we drove through Canada because it’s a little quicker, and there were many signs on the highway that said “driving over 150KPH will result in immediate vehicle impoundment”. I got the impression that Canadians took speeding very seriously.
I made a very minor “dumb American” error while driving to Niagara Falls, but not speeding— I saw a sign that said “Niagara Falls 500”, did a little mental math to estimate how long it would take to drive 500 miles at my average speed, which I always do on long highway trips, and I was amazed what great time we made! Until I finally realized, oh yeah, it was 500 Kilometers, eh?
Canada is a federation, and highway traffic laws are provincial. Ontario may take a different approach than Saskatchewan. Ontario may have more of a problem with speeders and therefore takes harsher measures? Dunno.
