afransen
Senior Member
At that point, put in place automated enforcement. Going above 130 is unreasonable and unsafe and brooks no legitimate complaints from drivers.
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Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion
- Thread starter Haljackey
- Start date
afransen
Senior Member
I was driving 120 on the 110 section of the QEW Sunday night. Fairly heavy rainfall (wipers on max) and I had people whipping by at 130-140, weaving between lanes. I thought 120 was pushing it from a traction perspective. You have to have a lot of faith in your tires to be pulling those kinda of maneuvers in those conditions.
Haljackey
Active Member
Imagine
PL1
Active Member
This is not a positive. Sorry, 110 is plenty fast enough. Or 120 hard enforcement. More people will die with higher speeds, and vehicles burn much more fuel.Imagine
Dan416
Senior Member
PL1
Active Member
They have strict enforcement of the limit. Here a 130 limit would be a de facto 150 limit.
lenaitch
Senior Member
Good to see that Nunavut is 90 Kph territory. There is apparently a grand total of one paved road in the territory.
Undead
Senior Member
I find I feel much less safe around drivers who weave in between lanes as opposed to those just going faster in one lane.
Dan416
Senior Member
100% this. Also, people going slow in the left or middle lanes. If you notice people are passing you on your right, you're in the wrong lane. This irks me particularly when you cut me off to go at or below the speed limit in the left lane.
drum118
Superstar
When did Ontario 140 province when they just raised it to 110???Imagine
Dan416
Senior Member
Notice the title "Imagine"...it's a hypothetical based on the announcement today of possibly going 120 or higher.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
To be slightly pedantic it comes down hard on anyone doing 50 Km/Hr ABOVE the posted speed limit. If the speed limits are raised to 120-130 Km/Hr than the stunt driving charges move to 170-180 Km/Hr, making stunt driving laws all but useless. Would you support a change in stunt driving laws that set the limits for stunt driving charges at the same current 150 Km/hr, or even a small bump to 160?
Actually yes I see drivers doing 130+ Km/hr nearly everyday on the 401/412/407*. At all times of the day, evenings, morning/afternoon peak, weekends. (asterix on the 407 because it's the one highway that seems to be designed for higher speed limits, and the traffic levels easily allow speeds at 130 Km/Hr
My point, perhaps made not so clearly, was that an increase in speed limits should be matched by enforcement of the posted speed limit. No more of this "oh just keeping up with traffic" or other rules thumbs used to justify speeds well above the posted limits. If you are above the posted limit, you are speeding and you get a ticket. If your confident that increasing speed limits won't be met by a proportional change in driver behaviour (number of speeders, and top speed of the speeders goes up in line with the speed limit increase), then like I said above those who continue to speed above to posted limit should face severe consequences. Personally I think the fraction of those drivers who think they are playing a real life game of mario kart will continue to drive as if every vehicle ahead of them is a goal for them to pass, and will do so regardless of the posted speed limit or the flow of the rest of traffic.
I remember when 5-10 Km/hr above the limit was the "rule of thumb" for being safe from police citing you for speeding. Then 20 Km/Hr above the limit became the norm. Now it seems that 130 Km/Hr is the free flow speed on most highways
innsertnamehere
Superstar
This actually isn't true - stunt driving remains at 150km/h on 110km/h highways, FYI. That's how it already is.
Generally Ontario has one of the largest speeding cultures on the continent, mostly attributable to our artificially low speed limits.
As a whole I'm supportive of increasing limits and enforcement with it.
Unfortunately, outside of 400-series highways, we have been moving in the other direction lately with most municipalities dropping speed limits even more and creating more "speeding".
I recall seeing a post by the OPP which issued a stunt driving ticket to a school bus caught doing 91km/h in a 50 zone. Shocking, until you realize that the municipality had changed the limit on the rural road it was on from an unposted limit (i.e. an 80 limit) to a 50 limit a week before. The poor school bus driver was just doing 11km/h over the limit like he always did, a previously very reasonable speed which wouldn't have even resulted in a ticket. Missed a new sign on a route he drives every day.. and BAM ridiculed on OPP twitter and slapped with a stunt driving charge, and probably fired. It's ridiculous.
We need to legalize the normal, safe speeds people are doing, especially in rural areas, and start penalizing people who actually drive aggressively and dangerously. Instead we have this weird culture of varying levels of speeding risk tolerance where everyone makes guesses how fast they can go without getting a ticket, and municipalities trying to slap 40-60km/h speed limits all over dead straight rural roads. It's ridiculous.
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adys123
Active Member
This is definitely more confusing than it needs to be, hopefully once highway speed limits are raised to the design speed, this can be revisited as 20/30 over on all highways.
ARG1
Senior Member
The problem in Ontario is that our speeding culture is derived from the fact that we have such a low speed limit. People (like admittedly myself) don't drive 120-125 because we feel an obligation to drive 20 above the speed limit, we do so because 100km/h is an unreasonably low speed limit, and we push the limit as much as we can get away with so that we can travel on these highways designed for 140km/h at a reasonable speed. I can promise you that in the event our speed limits are raised to 130, I personally wouldn't drive much faster than at most 135, because that's basically the limit at which I'm comfortable driving at.