Stunt Driving at 92km in a 50km zone in Ontario - Fight the charge

In this video, we’re gonna take a look at a stunt driving speed of 92 km in a 50 km zone. This can apply to speeds within that 90 km range but I wanted to give you a specific example for the discussion. The most important thing to look at is how the law sees 92 km in a 50 km zone, when we think about the law, we have to put aside how we feel and how we think the law should be or why it’s fair or wide isn’t fair because the law is the law.
The law has determined that on Ontario roads every speed limit under 80 km/h is called ”residential “. This does not mean the literal sense of residential that houses are around that there are schools, etc. It has simply divided speeds into two areas which are u, deemed residential and over 80 km deemed a highway. So when people get caught for stunt in a 50 km zone and I tell them on the phone that this is a residential speed, the first thing many people do is say things such as no, it was a road or no it was an industrial zone or no it was just the offramp of a highway or no the speed changed for only two blocks on a highway to 50 km. However, none of this matters because the law doesn’t care. And more importantly, when you get to court, the prosecutor or the province doesn’t care. They have been given a task of prosecuting stunt driving cases, and the law has told them that anybody under 80 km is in a residential zone and that is that. You try to explain to them where it was. What happened why it was a 50s zone that it wasn’t really a residential. This can frustrate your case.
Let’s take a closer look at how the prosecutor will move forward on a residential speed stent driving case. Keep in mind that most prosecutors in most courts see thousands of stunt driving cases every year. And they see thousands of other cases every year that they have to think about and prosecute and focus on. So the last thing they’re going to do in most situations is going to be to try to understand why your 50 km speed wasn’t really a residential zone. In fact, most times, all they think about is that you were driving in stunt driving speeds in an area where someone could’ve been crossing the road. Keep in mind that whoever created the road and the speeds made this zone a 50 for a particular reason. We don’t need to know what those reasons are, but they made a 50 zone to either control the speed of traffic slow it down, or allow people to cross the roads or possibly many other reasons. And the bottom line is the prosecutor doesn’t care 50 km equals a residential speed.
This is why the stunt speeds were changed to 40 km or more in these residential speed zones. Prior to 2021, stunt driving had to be 50 km or more in any area, including residential zones and highways. But the lawmakers decided that anything under 80 km there was a greater risk to public safety and they decided to include 40 km or more in a Stunt Driving charge.
It Is very important to remember that the reason stunt driving has very high penalties is because the law believes you have gone beyond speeding and are now putting peoples lives at risk with speeds of 40 km or more. So when you go to court and try to speak to a prosecutor, they don’t see you as a victim. They see the opposite. They see you as someone who could have killed somebody and made them a victim. So when you try to explain your story about how you’re a good person and you were weren’t really in a residential zone and you have a clean record they’re looking at you as someone that was driving a 4000 pound weapon.
Another important fact in your stun driving case is that every single court is different. In fact, every prosecutors is different. The best way to think about this is that if that radar is correct, which it is the majority of the time, the specific prosecutor in that specific court, then has full control over the penalties they want to ask for, this means that prosecutor and for example, could ask for a one-year license suspension where is a prosecutor in Ottawa could ask for a three-year license suspension. This means that a prosecutor in Peterborough could ask for a jail term where as a prosecutor in Windsor could ask for a $7000 fine. And this is what makes a stunt driving charge so scary. There are no two cases that are the same because no 2 quarts and no two prosecutors are the same.
This is precisely why it is so important to get proper legal advice before moving ahead and representing yourself in court. Because if you go in with the wrong strategy and you play yourself out to be a victim, this can have the opposite effect on your stunt driving case. And the opposite effect in a stunt driving case will result in a one to three year license suspension, a two to $10,000 fine and potential jail time.