Well its at that point where we agree to disagree, you are right though about government, I should not have used those terms, rather its the people who make up that government, you are right, this is still N America, and I still would rather live here than anywhere else, I drive everyday from the shores of Georgian Bay to Brampton, 280 km each day, I have seen alot and my drive has become longer and longer, yes its my choice, but none of the changes especially in Brampton are positive ones. Thats all I wish to say.
It's careless speeding that's the issue. And someone explain how this makes sense: I live 5 houses from a school of approx 800 kids. 10 in the morning, when school's in session, I hear a speeding motorbike, I look out the window, a bike flies past my house doing at least 160 km/h, or 100 MPH. toward the school. Guess what?! An OPP cruiser was right behind, doing the same speed. Toward the school, only 5 houses away from me. What gives the cops the rights to endanger kids' lives like that? To me it doesn't matter what the guy on the bike did, the cop had no right to chase him past a school. That's plain rediculous. Cops speed when they shouldn't, and to me this is an example of it. They have all the rights, eh?
I'm running a Cobra radar detector. I forget which model but it has the digital readout and voice alert. It has saved my butt a few times. 3kms ahead of time it'll go off, if a cop is ahead. And I can pass by them with that puppy on, and they can't detect it. I hide it when I see a cruiser, or if I'm driving in town. But out on the highway it has never let me down. I don't believe in rediculously high speeds, but every now and then I get my car up to about 100-110 MPH (160-180km/h). Not for long, and only on open roads with no traffic. But the speed limit is 80km/h on country roads around me, with nothing in sight but two lanes and yellow stripes. Why the heck would you NOT speed? Cops are after the money, not keeping the roads safe.
Explain this one to me. I'm driving 90km/h. All of a sudden I see a cop in my rear view. I drop down to 80, and she (yes a female officer) passes me. So I match her speed with a safe following distance. She does 95 km/h. All of a sudden she slams her brakes and hits the shoulder, hoping that I'll pass her doing a speed her radar detector will pick up. Luckily I hit the brakes right after and dropped below the speed limit, so she couldn't get a reading. If we can't speed, why should they. If we stay behind them and keep up, what's the harm?
Yes, some (the odd one) cops do the public big favours and they help us out. Others, kick you when you're down. They pick on people who can't afford tickets, and are just driving to work so they can feed their kids and family. Pull us over, fine. Tell us we were speeding. Fine. Let us off with a warning. Most people will slow down with a warning alone. Taking our money, our cars, 10 thousand dollar fines? What the hell? This is C-A-N-A-D-A. Our police system is supposed to help people. Instead we have the mafia in uniforms, and our tax dollars are filling their tanks.
I saw one officer in Toronto I think, help a lady change her flat tire. Round of applause to that officer. I'd do the same if I were in uniform. Cops like that, we could use.
And another thing. I'm aware of the radar-detector fines if I get caught. I forget exactly what the fines are, I know they're stiff, but not as stiff as losing your car. What happens to it when it gets impounded? We're all driving CADILLACS!!!! Every one of us should have a good radar detector. We're driving better and faster cars than the cops are, why not have a bit of protection so we don't lose our pride-and-joy toys?
Boy when I wrote this, I did not think it would hit such a nerve and polarize people. Eldo97 for the record, and believe it or not, police no matter what they are doing, can drive as fast as they want, when on patrol. Of course they become mere mortals again when not in uniform. Firetrucks, Ambulances, and Towtrucks are also not required to obey the limits. Just kidding with the tow trucks. Now that this law has been with us for a while, some things have become clear, it has not had the intended effect of slowing people down, now they only do 145 not 150 down the highway, it has made no difference to the safety of the streets, heck truckers drive like lunatics far more than car drivers do. It has really pissed people off, and now when a cop wants to pull someone over if they have gone the 50 plus, now sometimes people will try and get away. If you travel as much as I do on the 400 series, most of the vehicles in the hammer lane are VW TDI's (tuetonic Dumbkof Imports) usually with one light out or one taillight out belching out their black smoke and stink of their exhaust, so much for clean diesels, now these vehicles are usually doing 140 or better, guess they won't be getting 1000 km out of a tank of expensive (yippee) diesel. Jury is still out on this law, maybe the government can be made to see common sense. NOT
Hey look at me! I'm a street racer!
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Just a slight nudge above 150 km/h and Jim Kenzie joins Fantino's Most Wanted List
Jim Kenzie
Special to the Star
May 24, 2008
I am now officially a "street racer."
I went up to Dave & Buster's in Vaughan, near Highways 7 and 400. I confronted the young kids in their slammed Civics and tarted up STis, and said, "Okay, dudes, who's got a pink slip they want to put up? I got a four-year-old diesel-powered automatic transmission Volkswagen Jetta station wagon, and this silver-haired old man is ready to take on any of you. Anyone got the guts?
"That Natalie Wood look-alike can drop the hanky for me; that Christina Aguilera look-alike can drop the hanky for you."
Well, it didn't happen exactly like that.
I was cruising along with the flow of traffic on the 401 at just under 140 km/h. I thought about the recent furor generated by OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, that anyone doing 50 over the limit is automatically a street racer, and wondered what it would be like to be a Bad Boy.
So I nudged the accelerator just a titch, and barely saw 150 on the clock.
Wow! I'm a street racer!
In a Volkswagen. Jetta. Station wagon. Diesel. Automatic.
It was so much fun that a few weeks later I tried it again, this time in a 70-hp three cylinder sub-1.0 L Smart car. Okay, so it does have a Ferrari-style Formula One paddle shifter.
And seconds after I backed off from this lofty speed, an OPP paddy wagon went flying by me – no emergency lights – as if I were painted on the pavement.
C'mon, Julian. Get a grip. You can't even convince your own employees to buy into this nonsense.
And I read recently that a cop from another jurisdiction stopped a cop in a marked cruiser, who was allegedly driving more than 50 km over the limit. So much for that "we're-all-in-this-together" theory.
We build highways that are capable of these speeds. We have cars that are capable of these speeds. There is considerable doubt we have drivers that are capable of these speeds, but until or unless you choose to do something about that, you can't keep trying to be King Canute, driving back the tides, trying to keep us from driving at these speeds.
Ontario drivers are voting with their right feet, every single day.
You are proud of the fact that Ontario has the safest highways in North America. Fair enough. And there's no doubt that we shouldn't ever be satisfied, and seek to be even better.
But this little speed vendetta of yours is a complete and utter waste of time, and of scarce police resources.
According to a recent story in the Toronto Star, as of last weekend 5,000 vehicles had been impounded by your new edict, their owners subject to massive financial penalties that will continue to accrue due to raised insurance premiums.
Has it had any effect whatsoever?
Recently, your minions stated that speed-related fatalities have been reduced by 41 per cent from last year, hinting, if not directly claiming, that the street racer law is responsible for this dramatic decrease.
Just as similar claims made to support photo radar 12 years ago proved spurious, this one stinks of statistical skulduggery too.
First, every car crash is "speed-related" to one degree or another. If nobody is moving, i.e. there is no speed, then there are no crashes – unless a stationary car falls off a bridge.
Second, a change of this magnitude to a "mature" statistic like this clearly cannot be attributed to any single intervention, and surely is an anomaly. If there is any joke about statistics, it's that two points make a straight line, three points make a trend. You barely have two points here.
Third, the police seem to still be catching "street racers" in undiminished numbers, which suggests that this intervention is not in fact slowing down many people; anyone with eyes can see the same thing on any stretch of controlled-access highway in this province.
So even if 41 per cent is a robust number, wouldn't we notice a simultaneous decrease in the number of street-racer arrests, and in average speed on the highways?
Not to mention that this procedure flies in the face of a thousand years of British common law jurisprudence, turning the cop into the judge, jury and executioner. The punishment is meted out with the alleged perpetrator never having a minute in court, let alone his day.
(By the way, if this sort of thing turns your crank, there's a petition on this very issue on the web at: petitiononline.com/civil013/.)
Ontario's good traffic safety record has been there for a long time, far longer than this recent endeavour, far longer than you, Mr. Commissioner, have even been in office, so claiming any credit for it at all is fatuous.
Ironically, these speed racer stats were also quoted in a recent Star report of a Victoria Day holiday tragedy where three young women died going approximately zero km/h, after doing a U-turn on a country road. Two apparently weren't wearing their seatbelts, a disturbing sign, but when you get T-boned by a transport truck, seatbelts aren't likely to help.
Here's my bet as to why Ontario has such good overall safety numbers: most such statistics are based on deaths-per-so-many-vehicle-kilometres travelled. It is well known that controlled-access highways are by far our safest roads, because the opportunities for T-bone or head-on crashes – by far the most dangerous type of car crash – are virtually eliminated.
How ironic, again, that highways are also by far our fastest roads.
And I'm guessing that Ontario has a higher percentage of traffic travelling on highways – 401 et al. – than just about anywhere.
Hence, better overall safety numbers. Just a guess.
Not that I am trying to make light of street racing. Okay, I am, but I am not condoning it. Sure, it is an issue, but statistically it is a very small issue.
And automatically slapping that label on anyone who goes 50 over the artificially low speed limit (20 over what I think should be the real limit) isn't going to help.
If you want to do something intelligent about speed on our highways, try following the lead of other jurisdictions that have done it successfully.
The key? Set a realistic speed limit, one that the driving public will buy into, and enforce it consistently.
Most Ontario highways can easily handle 130 km/h. They do, for hundreds of thousands of cars, every day.
So make that the limit, make sure we all know it, and apply the needed enforcement.
Geez, if they can make it work in France – and they have – why won't it work here? Surely it's worth a try.
Oh yeah, it wouldn't hurt if we could do something about our lane discipline too.
Imagine, roads that are faster, more efficient and safer!
Dare to dream, Julian. Dare to dream.
Wheels' chief auto correspondent Jim Kenzie can be reached at jim@jimkenzie.com
__________________ 2004 Cadillac CTS-V
- Z06 FRCs, B&B w/ X-pipe, Sport Appearance spoiler, B&M shifter, 10000K lows, 8000k fogs, Black mesh, LEDs, 35% tint, etc.
2004 Cadillac CTS 3.6L
- V bumper, 18" MC2 Vauss rims, Sport Appearance Pkg, 10000k lows, 8000k fogs, UUC Cross Drilled & Slotted rotors, Front & Rear STB, V shocks & sways, etc.
Great article, Jim is one of my favorite automotive writers and it is for him that I buy the Sat Star for the Wheels section, at least with him, speed is put into perspective and not hysteria, not like his colleague that writes for the same section, Ian Law.
