Ontariohighwaytrafficact.com

From the Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/595630

Holy *EDIT*, man.

That guy is a moron!

There's a few stories floating around that he went to the same street racing school as OPP Constable Fischer, can anyone verify this?

you owe me a laptop....I just sprayed my keyboard with mocha

Imagine if Heidi Fischer were one of the officers that stopped the guy for going 250. That would be funny.

Driver: "Hey, before you tow my car, I just have to ask... can you park it next to the car that you got impounded last month? I mean... could I get a photo with it, or something?" Yeah... don't think that would go over too well, but it would be hilarious.

Maybe when he goes to court he can be like this guy. The best part is the last 25 seconds:

http://www.fquick.com/videos/Squid_On_S ... Owned/7617

Hahaha wow. Insanity defense...

question for Bear,

How come this guy wasn't criminally charged with Dangerous Driving?

I know of many motorcyclists that have been brutally thrashed by 172 for the likes of lifting the front wheel for a second (leaving a light...not catwalking down the hwy at 140 .lol) or lane splitting.....a bit hard to swallow when a guy going 2.5 times the posted limit gets the same charge?

PetitionGuy wrote:

question for Bear,

How come this guy wasn't criminally charged with Dangerous Driving?

To my understanding of Dangerous Driving, speed alone is not enough, there has to be other factors involved, but I could be wrong

hwybear wrote:

To my understanding of Dangerous Driving, speed alone is not enough, there has to be other factors involved, but I could be wrong

The R. v. MK decision said basically that excessive speed alone could be called dangerous driving.

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/19 ... i1324.html

Also in the R. v Cowan case, the Justice allowed an appeal, because although "excessive speed can amount to a marked departure, it can also amount to mere negligence or carelessness."

http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abca/doc/20 ... ca397.html

This whole thing is overblown.

Look 250 is to fast lets face it.

Did you guys also look at the ticket was at 12:30 am to.

In all honesty it was probably some young guy who just bought a new car and wanted to test it out and see how fast he got it.

I bet alot of you have done this. You may say but i bet you can remember being 25 and getting the chance to drive a nice car.

Maybe your not a street racer but i bet you pushed it a couple times to see how your car was.

People do this all the time i assume. I was just on the 400 today around lunch.

I was heading towards the 401 just near finch there.

I was going 120 and my doors were blowing off.

He was going 250 but in all honesty this guy is not some street racer or murder. He is some kid who went on the 400.

Atleast he exercised some common sense. He picked a off time with little traffic and a huge highway. I think that part has 5 lanes in each direction.

250 is to fast but i bet the guy wanted to test out his new wheels.

hell even on the autobhan people don't really cruise at 250.

No body cruises at 250. Most cant afford it not at 26. Once you start going over 150 gas starts to cost you to much. As i said this guy most likely does not do this on a regular basis.

he was probably some guy wanted to test out his car and was unfortunate enough to get caught. He went out late at night on a huge highway to test his car.

Althought i am sure youll all agree with this. The fact is if you wanna drive like that public roads is not the place... take it to the track. While 150 might not be a big deal when everyone else is going 125-130 anyways 250 is 100 over that. Thats starting to get very dangerous. It's to bad now the province gets to steal his car for a week but i hope people that want to drive this extreme take their cars other places.

I think the officer should get an award i wonder how hard it is to hit the front license plate at 250 km/h.

hwybear wrote:

To my understanding of Dangerous Driving, speed alone is not enough, there has to be other factors involved, but I could be wrong

appreciate the response

is does give credence to some thought I've expressed on other forums

that thought was that there was a time not too long ago when getting nabbed at that kind of speed could have been given slack from certain officers using their own discretion

were talking jaw-dropping speed here.....but a deserted highway, and a well equipped machine

not condoning the practice of trying to break the sound barrier....but there are some officers who drive fast personal cars, and might give a guy a break because they've probably been there themselves

cause this guy did get a break considering the hysteria of going a mere 150.....he damn near doubled it

People have gone more then this. Just go ask a well of freind his first week with his new BMW or Ferrari.

I want to clarfiy what i said incase anyone is offended by my post.

I in no way encourage this kind of speed that is dangerous and 250 puts peoples lives in range. Even if the flow of traffic was 130 that is double that. Knowing the 400 that is not unlikely.

He should have taken it to the track to test his car.

Although he did do this on a deserted huge highway that looks more like an air port run way (400 S and N where its 4-5 lanes.)

The fact that 22 people a day are charged with this is a joke. If only 22 are charged i cant imagine actually how many do this.

People drive alot faster then they want ot admit.

In the GTA u can no longer go 120 if your in the left most lane. Do this for more then 2-3 mins and ull have about 10 cars behind you within 8 feet of your bumper. The only way to avoid this is to go about 130.

People also know its hard for cops to look for speeders in traffic. You can't laser at the side of the road, its hard to pull people over, and you need to be in front or behind to use your radar.

People know this to and int he GTA the roads are so crammed it can be hard to hide with a concrete median.

250 is very dangerous but in no way AT ALL do i support legalized theft and having the province steal this mans Property at the side of the road making the police the judge, jury and executioner. And in no way is this stunt driving. The officer even said there was not other cars around. He was racing no one.

Speeding, sure. Stunt racing or street racing, fat chance.

tdrive2 wrote:

...

And in no way is this stunt driving. The officer even said there was not other cars around. He was racing no one.

Speeding, sure. Stunt racing or street racing, fat chance.

Sure it is. It's not racing, and it's mainly the media's fault for making everyone think that 172 is the "street racing" charge. But at 250 km/h, that is definitely performing a stunt. I think I can safely say that no one drives at 250 km/h because it is practical. He was doing it for the adrenaline rush or to show off to others on the highway - performing a stunt.

Stunt:

"# a difficult or unusual or dangerous feat; usually done to gain attention "

"A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat, or any act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes in TV, theatre, or cinema ..."

So taking your V6 Sedan on a 400 series highway in the middle of the night and driving in a straight line with almost no other cars on the road until your engine maxes out and you reach your top speed is a stunt?

This requires a special skill? Who was he endangering besides himself? This is also a special skill. Who was he trying to impress? Who would be impressed by that? Maybee the officer was the only one impressed that he was able to hit the license plate with a laser beam at 250 not a bad shot . It was the middle of the night on the 400 surely not many people to impress. The officer said he was racing no one else. There was no one else to beat or defeat.

Maybe it might have been a stunt if he was weaving through traffic at 190 and racing someone else. But to call this a stunt is a mistake.

But if 150 is stunt driving.

Are you also telling me that at 3 am in the morning on the way to Montreal with a vacant 3 lane highway that going 151 km/hr is a stunt?

This guy was speeding, he did the wrong thing, it was dangerous, it is wrong to drive 250 on a public road. But to call this stunt driving and for the province to steal his car for 7 days without having the chance to a fair trial is not right.

So whats this coming to now. 100 over the speed limit and Julian Fantino will blow up your car on global news, and charge you for the cost of clean up?

150 over the speed limit and they'll toss you in the nearest OPP detachment for a date with an Old pile of phone books ,julian fantino and the officer that clocked you?

I'd say it was a stunt. It's the middle of winter and the 400 is cratered with pot holes. It's real easy to not see one of the holes at night, driving that fast. You'll loose control. Plus, he was driving with snow tires at the time. What's the speed rating on those?

"# a difficult or unusual or dangerous feat; usually done to gain attention "

He got two out of three there. Stunt x2.

250 km/h is unusual, that's for sure. And at that speed, you're outdriving your headlights, which makes it dangerous. Unless you pulled strings and closed down the highway, then you don't know who you are endangering. I have been on that stretch of highway at all hours of the night - saying that the highway was definitely empty is a mistake.

150 km/h could be argued to be a stunt, too. Saying that someone was really only "20-30 km/h over" because everyone else is doing 120-130 km/h is insane. The limit is clearly posted and is common knowledge. Passing drivers who are already speeding above the limit sounds like a stunt to me. Also, not everyone does 120-130 km/h - I'm the one doing 100 km/h on the dot. Modern cars are certainly capable of 150 km/h, but the majority of drivers are not. They stay out of trouble when everything happens as expected, but one piece of debris on the highway or a large pothole and the brown stuff hits the spinny thing.

Im not going to criticize you if you drive 100 on the dot.

There is nothing wrong with that. If you choose to drive less than the speed limit and the flow of traffic you should be in the far right lane so others can pass you and you don't create traffic jams and enrage other drivers who then will use dangerous and illegal maneuvers to pass you.

I think those that do this cause a lot more problems then a speeder.

Aside i must agree with the tires.

Why isn't that a law. If your traveling faster then the tires your vehicle allows then this is certainly dangerous. I know a lot of Cars come with R rated tires that are good for 170. I think most winter tires are 170.

But the article does not specify what kind of tires he was using so we can not draw that conclusion he could have been using all seasons or winter tires but thanks for pointing that out to me i never though of that.

Lastly highway 400 at Finch avenue is certainly not have pot holes. That highway has new pavement and i believe it is 4 or 5 lanes there. It is really wide with a concrete barrier the asphalt is brand new. The lanes are pretty wide. In fact i was just on it today, it has brand new pavement there is no pot holes.

I am not supporting him. But i do think that in this situation he was endangering himself more then others on the road. he was speed but i dont think this is some sort of stunt.

Taking a car and driving it in a straight line as fast as it can go is not some stunt or special skill. A 12 year old with no license can do that to. It takes no skill or some kind of modified vehicle to take a car down an empty highway until the speed odo wont move anymore. From the sounds the road must have been vacant in the middle of the night.

It was dangerous, he deserved the ticket, he should have taken it to the track, not welcome on public roads, but this is no stunt and it is still wrong to steal his car for 7 days.

On any public road, if you are a danger to yourself, you are a danger to others.

I would like to see any 12-year-old get up to 250 km/h. A car at those speeds will not travel straight on its own. You are making a few minute corrections on the steering wheel every second, which some people do without even realising it. Aside from potholes, I have seen shoes, 2x4s, strollers, briefcases, tires, and all sorts of interesting debris on the highway. At 250 km/h at night, could you see a dark object like a tire or a briefcase in time to avoid it?

It most certainly is a stunt "as defined" by the Highway Traffic Act.

There was an show on Discovery last week about the Concorde jet that crashed just after take-off. The resulting investigation included the runway. On the runway the investigators located a 18 inch long x 3 inch piece of metal. They tracked this metal to a jet that had taken off 5 minutes prior, it was some part off of the engine shroud. This metal just by coincidence was laying up and not flat, the Concorde went powering up down the runway, and a tire hit the metal. The metal cut the tire, the tire ripped apart and a piece of tire flew up into the wing. The force of the impact (tire/wing) was on the fuel tank, since it was full fuel had no where to expand and blew a hole out elsewhere and caught fire, thus taking down the plane.......to make it short, that piece of metal could easily be on the highway.

Yeah, it was snow tires he was driving. I saw it on the news. That OPP guy that replaced Cam Wooley was going on about the tires he had.

What's the highest speed rating you can get a set of snow tires in? V?

Hopefully it wasn't some off-brand tire like Champiro - in which case he probably traded death for a license suspension.

Cruiser snow tires are H rated = 210km/hr.

Don't know if there is a "V" 240km/hr snow tire.

tdrive2 wrote:

I bet alot of you have done this.

Not even close. I've done a lot of stupid things in my life but I've never gone anywhere close to 250 km/h, at night, in the winter, on an urban highway which is full of inattentive and stupid morons. Some of us may also have done stupid things in the past but doing what this guy did? I doubt it.

tdrive2 wrote:

Who was he endangering besides himself?

The 400 is not empty even after midnight. The GTA has the busiest highway network in North America and, I'm sure you've noticed, is the worst city in which to drive on the continent. It's not solely aggressive or inattentive drivers; it's everything. Drivers are completely unpredictable, there is no one "driving style," and it ranges from the super-aggressive to the hyper-scared. There is too much traffic and too little predictability to attempt those speeds. One of the things that made his speed so dangerous is that people change lanes without looking, and even if they were doing a speed of, say, 120 km/h, he's going so fast that he'd crash right into the back of them and leave a gooey mess all over the highway before he'd even realize that "hey, that guy's going to cut me off." Another dangerous aspect is that people think that daytime running lights are headlights around here, so he assumed that he'd be able to see the outline of Tweedle-Dum-Lights-Off going 80 km/h in the second-to-left lane before smashing into his back end and sending him flying 500 feet into the air. Even the "aggressive" drivers on the 400 who might be going 150-160 km/h slaloming in and out of traffic would be virtual pylons compared to how fast he was going, and he'd hit those "aggressive" drivers so hard that, driving by the crash scene, you'd think that the military came by and launched a howitzer attack. In other words, he was endangering everyone on the road, and even after midnight that would be dozens of people.

Sure you can blame others for "getting in his way," but any driver with half a brain would not drive faster than a speed that would enable him or her to reasonably react to other drivers on the road and their stupidity. At 250, that is not possible.

I despise section 172 as much as anybody. But this guy's driving was totally unreasonable and I think he got off lightly. He should have been arrested.

hwybear wrote:

There was an show on Discovery last week about the Concorde jet that crashed just after take-off.

Good analogy. Part of runway safety is ensuring that there is no debris. If an aircraft blows a tire or there's any debris left, most pilots will not accept a takeoff or landing clearance until airport staff have removed it. Our highways don't have that level of protection. 250 km/h is faster than the speed I'd be touching down or taking off at in a jet, and that's in a tightly controlled environment, much more so than our roads.

What I'd like to know is, would the Crown consider upgrading the charges to Dangerous Driving?

M 81 mph 130 km/h

N 87 mph 140km/h Temporary Spare Tires

P 93 mph 150 km/h

Q 99 mph 160 km/h Studless & Studdable Winter Tires

R 106 mph 170 km/h H.D. Light Truck Tires

S 112 mph 180 km/h Family Sedans & Vans

T 118 mph 190 km/h Family Sedans & Vans

U 124 mph 200 km/h

H 130 mph 210 km/h Sport Sedans & Coupes

V 149 mph 240 km/h Sport Sedans, Coupes & Sports Cars

When Z-speed rated tires were first introduced, they were thought to reflect the highest tire speed rating that would ever be required, in excess of 240 km/h or 149 mph. While Z-speed rated tires are capable of speeds in excess of 149 mph, how far above 149 mph was not identified. That ultimately caused the automotive industry to add W- and Y-speed ratings to identify the tires that meet the needs of new vehicles that have extremely high top-speed capabilities.

W 168 mph 270 km/h Exotic Sports Cars

Y 186 mph 300 km/h Exotic Sports Cars

For reference only

I found some Pirelli winter tires that were W-rated. I can't imagine they would be any good in real winter conditions, but at least this shows that there is a remote chance that the driver had tires rated for the speeds he reached.

Squishy wrote:

Sure it is. It's not racing, and it's mainly the media's fault for making everyone think that 172 is the "street racing" charge. But at 250 km/h, that is definitely performing a stunt. I think I can safely say that no one drives at 250 km/h because it is practical. He was doing it for the adrenaline rush or to show off to others on the highway - performing a stunt.

Blame the media? Gimme a break!!!!!!!

When BILL 203 was put forth ,It was reffered to as the STREET RACING BILL

Frank the Farmer Klees The Father of 203 refers to it as the STREET RACING law

(Email I recieved from back peddling Farmer Frank, note the reference to STREET RACING)

I am acknowledging your email concerning the enforcement of the recent changes to the Highway Traffic Act section 172. Although I did put forward a Private Members Bill to address street racing these changes do not reflect my street racing Bill - My Bill applied to incidents in which police had reasonable grounds to determine that "street racing" was involved and that was the basis for roadside suspension and impoundment. I consider the safety of others to be paramount to the rights of a street racer.

The immediate suspension of the drivers licence and impounding of vehicles when offenders exceed 50 km/h or more of the posted speed limit was not part of my legislation. In fact, I have expressed my opposition to this arbitrary provision which allows for no discretion based on circumstance and disregards due process.

Sincerely,

Frank Klees, MPP

Chief La Barge refers to as the STREET RACING LAW!

Chief Blair refers to it as STREET RACING LAW!

Jim Bradley refers to it as the STREET RACING LAW!

Micheal I don't know what a Pit Bull looks like Bryant refers to it as the STREET RACING LAW!

Chris Bentley refers to it as the STREET RACING LAW!

Woody the OPP Commissioners gofer refers to it as the STREET RACING LAW!

And last but not least, Pinocchio and Geppetto refer to it as the STREET RACING LAW!

You can blame the media for Yellow Journalism and nothing more!

Antonio Talarico is a TOOL who's 0/2 for his rights!

This STREET RACING law is a joke, it was right from the START

and I would bet the farm, Mr. Churchill would agree, if the idiot piss tank was still around!

Looks like the proposal for 172 was purely to address racing, not speeding/stunting. Maybe the media shouldn't get the blame - but it's stupid how people want to argue semantics. Trying to argue that, "There was only one car! How can that be RACING?!" as if that would get the charge thrown out.

Is it dangerous to do any of the actions classified as stunting or racing by the HTA? Yes it is. So don't do it and no one will have to worry about the consequences. With all the media coverage this has gotten, I'd say 90%, if not 100%, of the province's drivers know of 172. If someone knows the consequences but chooses to break that law anyways, they deserve what they get.

Is it really that dangerous to smoke up your tires.....depends on where. However, that is not defined in S.172......

The HTA defines it as intentionally losing traction while turning. I'd say intentionally doing so on a public road is dangerous.

lets look at some history folks

12 years ago, your Canadian Gov't via it's Postal service released a stamp of one of the Country's noted heroes

http://www.museegillesvilleneuve.com/f1 ... stamps.htm

pretty cool honour eh? getting your mug on a Canadian stamp is some serious props

BTW....the guy on this stamp freely admitted to constantly "trying" to make it from Montreal to Toronto in 2 hours while at the wheel of his Ferrari street car on the 401

and nobody called him a murderer....or wanted to crush his car....or throw him in jail.......nope....other way around for this guy...the Canadian Gov't put him on a stamp FFS