OHTA.ca

Ottawa, Canada (AHN) - Beginning Tuesday, or April Fool's Day 2008, fines on Quebec drivers caught overspeeding will be doubled. It is not only the money penalty that will go up, but also demerit points.

The new law, Bill 42, is similar to Ontario's street racing rule. It stipulates fines for motorists who drive at over 40 km/h at under 60 km/h zones, speed at 50 km/h at 60 to 90 km/h areas and race at 60 km/h over 100 km/h zones.

Aside from the fine and demerit, the driver's license would be suspended for one week. For second-time violators within a decade, their fines will be thrice as high and the license suspension would be for one month.

Also covered by Bill 42 is a prohibition on using mobile phones and BlackBerrys while behind the wheel. Quebec will be the second Canadian province to ban the use of cellular phones while driving, next to Newfoundland and Labrador which had banned the practice since 2003. Violators will face fines ranging from $78.54 to $ 98.16 (80 to 100 Canadian dollar) ang get three demerit points.

Suzanne Robillard, spokeswoman for the Canadian Safety Council, explained to the Ottawa Sun, "The true distraction is the conversation and not the fact one hand is off the wheel." She added, "Telling people to use hands-free phones to make calls does not cut down on that distraction."

The stringent driving rules aim to curb Quebec's high rate of road accidents at 250 deaths and 11,000 injuries yearly

Yes, Quebec has similar laws, but they actually didn't try to hide anything about it, they said it was to deal with "excessive speeding." They also don't have a vehicle seizure for the first offence, just a roadside licence suspension. Finally, there's a sliding scale, so on lower-speed roads (that may be residential sidestreets), it kicks it at 40 over; on an Autoroute it's 60 over, which makes a lot more sense as far as safety is concerned than one blanket "hit this magic number and you lose your car."

a simple one number...50 is a lot easier to remember than 3

hwybear wrote:a simple one number...50 is a lot easier to remember than 3

30 is easier so thinks Julian!

if fantino had his way we'd all be walking around with padding and helmets...protecting ourselves from ourselves......

I think that the law would make much more sense if it were in %, so have "Exceeding the speed limit 20-35%" instead of 16-29, ""Exceeding the speed limit 36-60%" instead of 30-49, and "Exceeding the speed limit 60+%" instead of 50+... That way doing 160+ on the 401 would land the same penalty as 150, but in a school zone you'd have to go just over 64 km/hr to get a full booking of 6 pts. And if someone doesn't know how to do percent over, well, might stimulate them to drive at the speed limit then.......

Or everyone will start driving around with calculators. And that would create another driver distraction ban: NO DRIVING WITH CALCULATORS! 6 pt penalty or maybe 2x3pt penalties (since you've got the calculator handy)

Nah, the smart ones will figure out the "over" for the highways they usually drive on.

hwybear wrote:Ottawa, Canada (AHN) - Beginning Tuesday, or April Fool's Day 2008, fines on Quebec drivers caught overspeeding will be doubled. It is not only the money penalty that will go up, but also demerit points.

The new law, Bill 42, is similar to Ontario's street racing rule. It stipulates fines for motorists who drive at over 40 km/h at under 60 km/h zones, speed at 50 km/h at 60 to 90 km/h areas and race at 60 km/h over 100 km/h zones.

Aside from the fine and demerit, the driver's license would be suspended for one week. For second-time violators within a decade, their fines will be thrice as high and the license suspension would be for one month.

Also covered by Bill 42 is a prohibition on using mobile phones and BlackBerrys while behind the wheel. Quebec will be the second Canadian province to ban the use of cellular phones while driving, next to Newfoundland and Labrador which had banned the practice since 2003. Violators will face fines ranging from $78.54 to $ 98.16 (80 to 100 Canadian dollar) ang get three demerit points.

Suzanne Robillard, spokeswoman for the Canadian Safety Council, explained to the Ottawa Sun, "The true distraction is the conversation and not the fact one hand is off the wheel." She added, "Telling people to use hands-free phones to make calls does not cut down on that distraction."

The stringent driving rules aim to curb Quebec's high rate of road accidents at 250 deaths and 11,000 injuries yearly

Errr... It's not anything like Ontario's HTA 172.

The only thing that appears similar to HTA 172 is an automatic license suspension for going X speed past the posted speed limit. HTA 172 covers many more acts then bill 42 does. Also, It does not appear to have the charter violating bits.