Speeding fines

Ontario does not print one price for speeding. The set fine on an offence notice is a RATE: so many dollars for every kilometre per hour you were over the posted limit. Which rate applies depends on how far over you were, and the schedule steps at 20 km/h and 30 km/h over.

On an ordinary road the rate is $2.50 per km/h in the lowest band, $3.75 once you are 20 km/h or more over, and $6.00 from 30 km/h over. Because it is a rate and not a step, two drivers one km/h apart across a boundary do not pay one rate-step apart — every kilometre of the excess is repriced.

Worked through: 20 km/h over the limit on an ordinary road gives a set fine of $75.00 under Schedule B. The calculator above runs the same arithmetic against the same schedules, for every band and every zone.

The zone does not adjust the ordinary-road figure — it selects a different table entirely. Schedule B prices ordinary roads, Schedule D community safety zones, Schedule E construction zones, and Schedule F construction zones with a worker present. Each is separately headed and each has its own 4 bands.

A community safety zone is the expensive one: $5.00 per km/h in the lowest band against the ordinary road's $2.50, and $12.00 in the band above 30 km/h over.

There is no single community-safety-zone multiplier anywhere in the schedule. Where a non-speeding offence carries a paired ordinary and community-safety-zone row — a stop sign, a red light — the two amounts are read off their own two rows, and they do not scale by a constant factor.

The statutory ladder lives in HTA s. 128(14) itself, and it runs from $3.00 per km/h at the bottom to $9.75 per km/h at the top. At 20 km/h over, the set fine is $75.00 and the statutory figure is $90.00 — same offence, same speed, two different instruments answering two different questions.

Which one applies to you is not a matter of severity. It is a matter of route: the set fine is the counter price for closing the matter without a trial, and the statutory fine is the range a justice sentences within if the matter goes to court, whether because you contested it or because no set fine exists at all.

All four speeding schedules end the same way. In the top band, where a rate would go, the schedule prints “No out of court settlement”. Not a higher rate and not a maximum — no amount. From 50 km/h over the limit, on an ordinary road, in a community safety zone, in a construction zone and in a construction zone with a worker present alike, there is nothing you can pay to settle it.

That is a statement of law, not a missing feature of this page and not a limitation of the calculator. What it means practically is that the ticket is answered in court, and the amount is fixed there under the statutory ladder — which does price that range: $487.50 at exactly 50 km/h over, before anything is added to it.

Demerit points at that speed are 6, from a different instrument again.

Québec puts the price in the statute. Article 516 of the Code de la sécurité routière fixes an amende of $30.00 plus a rate for every complete tranche of 5 km/h by which the limit was exceeded. The rate is not fixed: 5 bands select it, and the band is chosen by the TOTAL excess.

This is a band lookup, not a marginal calculation. Every tranche in the excess is priced at the one rate the band selects — you do not pay the first band's rate on the first tranches and a higher rate on the rest. Reading it the other way produces a smaller wrong number for every excess that crosses a boundary.

The bands start at 1 km/h ($10.00 per tranche), 21 km/h ($15.00), 31 km/h ($20.00), 46 km/h ($25.00) and 61 km/h ($30.00) over the limit.

Worked through: 20 km/h over a 50 km/h limit is 4 complete tranches, giving an amende of $70.00.

Article 516, second paragraph, multiplies the base amount in a construction zone, up to a cap that moves with the posted limit: 39 km/h over where the limit is low, 49 km/h in the middle tier, 59 km/h in the high tier.

Article 516.1 takes over above those caps — at 40 km/h, 50 km/h and 60 km/h over for the three limit tiers respectively — and multiplies the amende by 2. Where the driver has repeat related convictions in the preceding 10 years the multiplier is 3 instead.

Article 516.2 doubles the base amount for school-zone speeding at 39 km/h over or less. Its threshold is flat: unlike the other two, it does not move with the posted limit.

The thresholds are mutually exclusive by construction — one km/h apart in each tier — so a ticket takes exactly one branch. The calculator shows which one, with its own article beside it.

Most people who arrive at a camera ticket want the amount, and the amount comes from the same instruments as any other speeding charge: Ontario's set fine schedules, Québec's art. 516 formula. The calculator above is the right place to work it out, using the excess speed printed on the notice.

What a camera changes is the record rather than the arithmetic — and that part is genuinely unsettled in the documents read for this site. It is set out with its evidence on the demerit points page rather than answered here.

In Ontario the settlement is the set fine, plus a victim fine surcharge banded on that fine, plus a flat service cost of $5.00. On the 20 km/h example: $75.00 plus $15.00 plus $5.00 is $95.00.

In Québec a constat claims the amende, plus frais, plus a contribution. On the 20 km/h example: $70.00 plus $33.00 plus $28.00 is $131.00. Each of those three terms comes from its own instrument, and the ticket page walks through them one at a time.