Quebec Tourism and Speeding

I’m not sure when it happened, but Quebec now has photo radar to catch people who exceed the posted limited on their roads. I recently received a registered letter from the province and when I went to pick it up, the postmaster said she was curious about what it might be because she had seen a lot of them lately.

It turned out to be a letter from the Montreal area with a picture of one of my cars saying that the car had been captured exceeding the speed limit by 8Km/Hr that’s 5 Miles/hour for my American readers. There was no doubt that it was my car (Even though I wasn’t driving it). A family member had been to Montreal recently and was photographed on a 6 lane highway, where there were only a couple of cars.

The letter said that an officer (and gave the officer’s name) had reviewed the photo and deemed that the car in question had broken the law and a fine was in order. The fine was $67 and because the driver could not be determined, there would be no demerit points.

There are so many things wrong with this, that it’s hard to know where to start.

  • It’s clear from the photo that the plate on the car is out-of-province. This means that it would not be economical for the driver to fight the ticket in court.
  • If you fight the ticket in court and are found guilty, the driver gets demerit points.
  • Inaccuracies in the car’s instruments make it practically impossible to remain with 5Mph of the posted limit. For that reason, most police forces set there radars at considerably higher thresholds.
  • There was no safety issue, it was a six lane road with no traffic.

This is very likely a money grab by the province, targeting people who will just pay for the reasons listed above. The thing is what do we do about it? There is not much we can do really, so I suggest that we get our money back by doing the following:

  • Let people know that there is zero tolerance for speeding (Especially in Montreal).
  • Suggest that it is likely out-of-province cars that are being targeted.
  • Consider spending you tourist dollars in other places.
  • Write letters to you government representatives to express your concern.
  • BLOG about your own experiences.
  • Suggest to local news agencies that there might be a story here.

I’m sure that the officers involved have better things to do and are not happy about having to target drivers that doing their best to follow the law. Let’s do everyone a favour and put an end to this silliness. If we can’t do that, lets send a message to Quebec that we do not approve.

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