Stunt driving and racing

HTA s. 172 creates the offence of racing, contests and stunts. What those words MEAN comes from a separate regulation — O. Reg. 455/07, “Races, Contests and Stunts” — and reading the Act's offence section alone leaves out the entire definition.

Most of the listed stunt behaviours have nothing to do with a speedometer:

• Driving in a way that indicates an intention to lift some or all of the tires off the road, including a motorcycle on one wheel.
• Driving in a way that indicates an intention to lose traction while turning, or to spin the vehicle without keeping control of it.
• Driving alongside another vehicle in the oncoming lane for longer than passing reasonably requires.
• Driving with a person in the trunk, or driving while not sitting in the driver's seat.
• Driving in a way that indicates an intention to prevent another vehicle from passing.
• Braking or slowing solely to interfere with another vehicle's passage.
• Driving deliberately as close as possible, without justification, to another vehicle, a pedestrian or a fixed object.
• A specific left turn at a red light, executed to beat the oncoming vehicle off the mark.

A stunt driving charge is not something you settle at a counter. HTA s. 172 attaches immediate consequences to the CHARGE itself — a licence suspension and the impoundment of the vehicle, imposed at the roadside and before any conviction.

Those roadside durations are stated in the Act's own section and are not carried in this site's payload, so this page names the mechanism and points at the provision rather than printing a day count it cannot source.

On conviction the Act adds a suspension of its own: at least 1 year for a first conviction, at least 3 years for a second, and an indefinite suspension available on a third. A conviction also carries 6 demerit points under O. Reg. 339/94.

The set fine schedule's row for racing a motor vehicle carries no amount. It prints the schedule's abbreviation for an offence with no out-of-court settlement, in an ordinary zone and in a community safety zone alike. There is nothing to pay to make it go away, because the mechanism that would let you does not exist for this offence.

What exists instead is the range HTA s. 172 gives a court to sentence within: $2,000.00 to $10,000.00, with imprisonment of up to 6 months also available. In a community safety zone the MINIMUM is multiplied by 2 while the maximum is unchanged — a minimum-only doubling, not a doubling of the range.

Careless driving and stunt driving get confused, and they are neither the same offence nor the same money. Careless driving under HTA s. 130 carries a court range of $400.00 to $2,000.00, and 6 demerit points on conviction.

There is a real absence here worth stating: the set fine that once existed for careless driving in a community safety zone was revoked and never replaced. A community-safety-zone careless driving charge therefore has only the court route — no out-of-court settlement exists for it either.

Québec has no stunt driving offence of this shape. The nearest thing a Québec driver means by it is the high-excess route in CSR art. 516.1, which multiplies the speeding amende by 2 above a threshold set by the posted limit — 40 km/h, 50 km/h or 60 km/h over for the low, middle and high limit tiers — and by 3 where the driver has repeat related convictions in the preceding 10 years.

The phrase «grand excès de vitesse» appears nowhere in the Code de la sécurité routière. It is the market's term, used here because it is what people say; the statute's own hook is the article number. The arithmetic, and which of the three multiplier articles applies, is worked through on the speeding page.