CanadaJimmy

I am a habitual speeder. There are roads that for all intensive purposes are highways (multiple lanes with no traffic lights or sidewalks), that have a 70 or 80 kph limit. Sorry, no, I'm driving at 100/110, I'd prefer to get from A to B before next Christmas. And there are roads that have a 50 limit which are perfectly safe at 80 as long as you slow down in sections of limited visibility.

The worst sections that bug me are the Golden Ears bridge, where the offramp into Langley is 50 kph, and also on Barnet Highway a few km before you reach Port Moody, also 50 kph. In both these cases there are 3 lanes of traffic and are always very light traffic so the 50 kph limit sign may as well be a giant middle finger to the driver. It's like they always deduct 10-20 kph off of sensible driving speed.

GavinR

Bollox. It's the sudden stop that kills.

geedee

I've yet to meet an Ontario plated car that knows to pull back in to the slow lane!

dbd33

I have Ontario plates and yet make an effort to do that but, yes, it's very noticeable when driving from San Diego. You first see this stupidity around Chicago and it's always an Ontario plated vehicle. I'm so relieved when I pass and see that the driver's Asian.

geedee

I obviously haven't met you on the road yet, dbd33; I'm sure it will be a pleasure when I do!

GavinR

Along with every driver I passed today driving after dark at 20 under the speed limit with no lights on.

scrubbedexpat133

Thats because they are both the slow lane

jimf

Anyone been through the process of taking a speeding ticket to court in Calgary? I have to say that the officer behaved like a right ****** today. If they were ambushing drivers for an hour or so today on Bow Valley Trail they could easily have made $5-10k. The usual format - hiding behind a parked minivan........

Former Lancastrian

There are several companies like POINTTS traffic ticket services who advertise their services.
http://www.pointts.com/traffic-tickets/calgary/

The question to ask yourself is Was I speeding?

magnumpi

Why? What if you was or was not ? Who cares, we all speed just don't always get caught.

Fight it and at least keep any points from sticking to your license. I was 100% speeding, but that's not the point, there was no danger in going over the limit on a road as wide as the M6

Former Lancastrian

Sure everybody speeds within reason deliberately or not but unfortunately our roads have speed limits.
If it is one of the static radar (camera) vans then you usually just get a ticket in the mail with NO points on the licence as the ticket is issued to the registered owner of the vehicle speeding.
If you happen to get caught by a patrol officer then its a ticket with a fine and points.
All Im trying to suggest is that too many people these days won't admit they were at fault and try to blame someone else for their indiscretion. Sure if there are mitigating circumstances then use the system where a fine can be reduced or no points given but at least admit you were speeding is my mantra.

magnumpi

I did, I admitted I was speeding. But here they don't target accident black spots like in the UK, they target easy places to catch people speeding, brow of a hill, blind bend, even the 401 highway is a target cash grab.

Former Lancastrian

Try living in a city that has 51 red light/speed cameras as well as unmarked static camera vans which are usually placed in construction zones and school playground areas (think Sunday mornings at 7am) as well as unmarked police cars. You soon learn to moderate your speed

magnumpi

Ohh my that sucks !!!!

That in BC then, Ontario was discussing getting static cams last year but the idea got thrown out.

jimf

I probably was doing over the speed limit. It is a perfect location to harvest traffic fines with traffic coming off a main road over the brow of a hill. There was no safety issue at all there. The point of taking it to trial wouldn't be to make a case that I wasn't over the speed limit but rather to add to the effort required of the system to enforce the fine. If everyone objected to every ticket then it wouldn't be such a money spinner for the government. If lucky, the officer wouldn't turn up at court because it's more efficient for him to be out on the streets harvesting more fines.

Life's too short to bother with making a complaint against the officer for his behaviour. He was certainly brusque, rude, arrogant but that's probably typical of them. It really was like a production line and he wanted rid of me as quickly as possible so he could harvest the next fine. I expect they have a financial target to meet.

It is quite comical sometimes when you see what they get up to it their efforts to harvest fines but the reality is it reduces any kind of respect people have for the police.

Oh well I think a laser jammer will be the next purchase. Apparently in Calgary the police use laser guns and outside the city it's radar.