Haha, last time I was in Canada I went to the gym and was confused for quite some minutes about why I could suddenly run 10mph on a treadmill without feeling like I was going to die. Yup, it was set to km/kph. But there was a switch on it to toggle to “Imperial” measures which I had never seen on US treadmills. It was a brand I’m familiar with in the US, so apparently they make convertible units for the Canadian market.
I’m astonished that the cop interviewed seemed proud of this. It’s a badly misguided application of police discretion. At that speed, the driver should be banned from driving, let alone just a fine. It’s not “friendly” to the other road users he might kill or maim.
It looks to me like the cop’s actions stopped him from engaging further in the dangerous behavior that might have killed or maimed someone. The only other reason to punish him would be retribution, for what was (if you take the story at face value and believe the driver) an honest, albeit very very stupid, mistake.
It might have been an honest mistake to go 10mph. But he was going 125mph.
Driving 25 mph above what is to any reasonable person a very high speed limit (his claimed mistaken belief that the limit was 100kph) is reckless regardless.
What the cop did was extremely stupid.
The driver should’ve offered Dudley a one-liter bottle of schnapps, to prove his dedication to the metric system.
Yes, but how reckless depends on the road and how much (if any) other traffic there was.
Once you’re talking about “how reckless” you’ve already lost all claim that this is reasonable law enforcement.
How so?
Canada uses metric in theory but in practice there are a lot of exceptions. Yesterday I was at Western Canadian Agribition, the country’s largest livestock show, and a local cattle rancher challenged me to guess the weight of his prize bull. I guessed “800 kilograms”, to which he immediately responded, “What the fuck does that mean?” (After doing the conversion into pounds, we discovered that I was actually pretty close.)
Shades of the Wisdom of Crowds!
Great book! I think I started a thread ion this many years ago, and Canadians certainly use metric for driving speeds and distances. But the Canadians I know seem to use pounds for weight, feet and inches for height, and Fahrenheit for their home thermostats and body temperatures.
Pretty much this. We’ve upped the penalties against “stunt driving” several times over the last few years, because jackasses in super cars still don’t seem to be getting the message. Anything 50 km/hr over the posted limit is supposed to be an automatic impoundment of the car, and some massive fines.
There’s a great meme going around the past few years on “How to measure like a Canadian”.
I think there’s a very gradual generational shift on some of these. For your example, “Fahrenheit for their home thermostats and body temperatures”, that’s true for my parents, but not for me. I had a “fun” time a couple of weeks ago trying to set the thermostat at my mom’s place to a reasonable temperature, because she has it set to Fahrenheit, and I was having a hell of a time figuring out what that meant in real temperatures.
Right, I believe stunt driving laws in Ontario were initially introduced in response to some serious accidents caused by street racing. My only problem with it is that, as often happens, Ontario got a little over-enthusiastic. A zealous cop could charge you with stunt driving, impound your car, and suspend your license for any of these offenses: squealing your tires, following too closely, failing to yield (including making a left turn before oncoming traffic starts to move), or driving without due care and attention. They’ve just increased the automatic penalties (that occur even before a court appearance and without a conviction) to a 30-day license suspension instead of 7, and vehicle impoundment to 14 days instead of 7. Also, where the speed limit is 80 km/h or less, the stunt-driving speeding threshold is now 40 km/h instead of 50.
Also of note: several driving offenses also come under federal law because they’re considered criminal offenses and result in a criminal record. These include dangerous driving and DUI.
Nitpickery: Canada does not have an offence of DUI. There are two main offences: “Driving While Impaired” and Driving with a blood alcohol level greater than .08.
Pounds for body weight and feet and inches for height is still common usage, but medical records AFAIK are always in kilograms and centimeters. I think home thermostats are most often set to Celsius because it’s more natural to deal with the same scale as the weather reports. The one thing that remains pretty much stuck on Fahrenheit in Canada is oven temperatures or in general temperatures related to cooking. I’ve seen some oven temperatures cited in Celsius but it isn’t common.
Driving at 125mph cannot be dismissed as an honest misatke. What a bizarre view of the matter. You don’t get a “warning” for this level of stupid recklessness. He’s either simply lying, or his safety judgment is so appallingly bad that his license should be suspended. You really cannot see any reason to keep someone like this off the road other than retribution?
I know that we Americans sometimes have a limited view of the world, but America is not the only country with a strong federal system.
Upon further reflection, I mostly accede to this point of view, but I still want to know what this particular road was like. On a long, flat, straight stretch of divided highway, on a clear day, in a sparsely-populated area, where there are few if any other vehicles on the road, driving 100 or even 125 mph might begin to seem reasonable.
I wondered if there were places in North America where the speed limit legitimately is 100 mph. From what I was able to google, apparently not: the highest speed limit is apparently 85 mph. Still, the fact that I suspected there might be such a place says something.
We’ve had threads in the past where posters who apparently had limited driving experience outside of urban, or at least relatively high population density, areas asked when anyone would ever have occasion to use highbeams, or cruise control. And it occured to me to wonder if this might be similar: if the people who are most shocked by this driver’s speed are those who haven’t ever driven in areas where they had the road pretty much to themselves.
The 401 between Detroit and Toronto is a raceway. I’ll be going 90+(mph), and be blown off the road by trucks and busses.