Anyone who spends a lot of time on the road for work will tell you that speeding is a major issue, and one that is growing at a rapid pace here in Ontario. Anyone who feels otherwise doesn't get out enough.
I spend a lot of time on the road for work (hence why it's a pet issue for me), and respectfully I disagree that speeding i
n and of itself is a major issue. There's lots of situations where speeding is definitely a factor, especially on busy highways, but that's as much about the abrupt lane changes as it is about the speed itself. I think tailgating is a much larger problem, personally, especially when combined with distracted driving. How often do you see a 7 or 8 car pileup because somebody slammed on the brakes? Far more often than we should...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating speeding as excusable in most circumstances, especially in certain contexts like residential neighbourhoods. But my point is that by getting more and more heavy handed, you end up hammering otherwise safe drivers as part of a crackdown that has a negligible effect on true road safety beyond satisfying a petty urge to punish those that irritate us. This is especially true as speed limits are lowered across the province to parking lot speeds in many areas. Weirdly, I have yet to hear about carnage on the QEW between Hamilton and St Catharines where they raised the limit to 110...
i realize you gave 1 scenario as an example only however;
if the sign is obstructed you have a case, take a picture and bring it to court.
if you`re willfully speeding, yeah you roll the dice.
There's plenty of other examples, and it's all well and good to assume the legal system will smile nicely on your good reasons until it doesn't.
Case in point:
A buddy got charged with drunk driving in BC while driving home the morning after a Whitecaps game. BC has a similar roadside system for DUI, with no easy system for appeal. You blow over, you're done driving for 90 days and your vehicle is impounded immediately. Forget court. This is doubly complicated because they have a two-tier system with one punishment of a BAC of 0.05 and another for 0.08 and greater. He blew 0.09, so full meal deal.
Fortunately for him, he was well off enough to pay a lawyer a lot of money to fight his case, which initially got a total stonewall from the appeals and arbitration system. As he 100% knew he was fully sober (wasn't particularly drunk the night before and slept 8+ hours in his office to be extra safe), he was willing to go to the wall to fight, and so kept paying the lawyer. Eventually, out of pure luck, someone noticed that the breathalyser calibration sheets were all identical except for the serial number written in for each unit. Turns out the cops were calibrating one unit with the serial number blank, photocopying that sheet, then writing in the serial number in for each uncalibrated unit.
So after three months with a suspended license, thousands in mandatory impound fees, and a mountain of legal bills, the arbitrator quietly cancels his ticket and tells them to go away. He got the money for his ticket back, but no refund on the impound fees and zero compensation for the legal bills. If he was some delivery driver making a lower wage, dependant on his job to feed his family, it would have been a much different outcome, as the money wouldn't have been there to pay the lawyer and nobody would have been the wiser. A number of other folks had their 'convictions' thrown out, which must have been a pleasant surprise for them...
Here's a news story covering the incident:
Drunk driving cases tossed due to bad paperwork
(Much to my buddy's chagrin, the tone is that a bunch of dangerous criminals got off scott-free on a technicality, rather than the true story of police potentially ruining lives through a combination of laziness and lack of due care. The chiefs quote about wanting to keep cops on the street rather than wasting time with paperwork was particularly galling, as it implies that police officers judgement alone is enough to determine guilt or innocence.)
My long-winded point is that leaving guilt to be determined roadside creates a situation where the onus is on the defendant to prove innocence rather than the crown to prove otherwise. By combining these 'efficient' conviction systems with brutal penalties leaves a lot of room for people to have their lives turned upside down for anything ranging between a brief moment of inattention to full-blown evidence manufacturing. As
@GreyGhost has pointed out, there are multiple examples of police getting these charges very, very wrong.
As a first cut, absolutely zero penalty roadside. It has been proven that some cops abuse 172 with no repercussions and many innocent victims. Penalty after conviction only. I think an interlock would be entirely reasonable. GPS in your car for one year after conviction that automatically mails you tickets if you speed. Corrects your driving and gives you time to relearn habits. Basically you have proven that you are incapable of following the law so they give you a nanny to make sure you do. Same as DUI interlock, get caught driving a car without the GPS and get a horrendous kick in the nuts. For prillers point about driving for work, allow a portable device (or phone app?) so you can hop into any vehicle you want as long as the tracking is active while you are in the seat. If it's an app, allow it to show the current drive so a cop can see if you just turned it on after the cherries lit (I was thinking timer but you could always say that you started the drive 10 seconds before the cop saw you).
Were I (God forbid) convicted for this, I'd happily pay for whatever gear is required to keep my job. What I would lose for not being able to drive would far outweigh any costs here. If they can do it for DUI, they must be able to find a solution here...
My only issue with this is that fines aren't proportional to income. Work a minimum wage mcdonalds gig and are running late to work and get pulled over? That might be half a months pay.
Sweden and Switzerland both calculate fines based on a combination of speed and net worth of the speeder. This has led to fines in excess of $1M in some cases. As Canada is so terrible at figuring out how much people actually earn for tax purposes (read: the CRA doesn't really want to), you'd still have plenty of wealthy folks paying minimum wage fines, but I'm personally fine with those who make more paying more.
