Driver nabbed going 132 km/h in a 50 zone

CALGARY – (CityNews) Calgary police are hoping to bring awareness to speeding in the city, as they nabbed two drivers going well over the posted limit.

In one case, someone was driving 132 km/h in a 50 km/h zone.

“We’re just trying to reiterate that it’s extremely unsafe to be speeding at that kind of speed within Calgary,” Smith said. “Unfortunately it does happen. Those are the type of people we’re targeting. We’re trying to make Calgary roads safer and we’re trying to share what out Traffic Unit is doing out and about around Calgary.”

According to a post on Twitter, Cst. Mark Smith said the driver’s excuse was that ‘they didn’t think they were going that fast.’ Both of the tickets were apparently issued in the community of Beddington, on different days this week.

In another case, which appears to be in the community of Beddington, a driver was caught going 101 km/h in a 50 zone just after 12:00 p.m.. Smith told 660 NEWS the driver was a youth, but wasn’t sure if they had a graduated licence.

“What generally happens is if you’re caught speeding over the 50 km/h, the officer can give you a mandatory court appearance, which is what happened in these cases. So what you’d be required to do is go to court and give an explanation in front of a judge.

“But you’re looking at potentially six to eight demerit points that would be added to your licence. Potentially a pretty hefty fine as well. You could be looking at several hundred dollars and in some cases it could be a thousand dollars,” Smith explained.

The excuse in that situation was that it was the driver’s sister’s car and she needed it.

“It’s not worth it and it’s extremely unsafe and it puts other people at risk. The Traffic member told me that this happened during the day when there were pedestrians around and other drivers were around, so you could only imagine what would happen if this person lost control at that sort of speed, or perhaps didn’t see a vehicle pull out in front of them.”

The message from Smith: Slow Down #yyc!

Smith also hopes the community submits any traffic concerns to the Calgary Police website as a way to start monitoring problem areas.

“We always encourage people to send us traffic service requests, which can be done on the Calgary police website and that will go to our Traffic Unit members and they will respond to them. That’s quite likely how this member managed to catch these drivers.”