Municipal councillors across Ontario, including Ottawa, are pushing for tougher provincial action to address stunt driving. Despite recent crackdowns on speeders from the Ottawa Police Service, they feel the province must step in to make local streets safer and quieter.
“It’s a huge issue,” said Barrhaven West Coun. David Hill, adding that the noise from stunt drivers “becomes a legitimate mental health issue” when it happens every night in his ward.
According to the Ottawa Police Service annual report, there have been, on average, 444 recorded stunt driving incidents in Ottawa annually from 2019 to 2023.
In Ontario, driving 40 km/h over the speed limit on roads with a speed limit of under 80 km/h, or driving 50 km/h over the speed limit, classify as stunt driving.
In June, Ottawa police launched Residents Matter, a late-night traffic initiative focused on key stunt-driving locations in Orléans, Kanata, Riverside South and Barrhaven.
For example, on July 19 police clocked a stunt driver going 181 km/h in a 70 km/h zone on Strandherd Drive, a popular road for stunt drivers in Barrhaven.
After six operations from June 21 to Sept. 19, police have laid 32 stunt-driving charges. In Ontario, stunt drivers face an immediate 30-day licence suspension and 14-day vehicle impounding. If convicted, they face $2,000 to $10,000 fines and potential jail time.
Hill said he has spoken with Ontario’s solicitor general and Ontario’s associate minister of auto theft and bail reform to work on legislation to further punish repeat offenders. He said that while it is “understandable” if someone speeds once and gets a ticket for it, there must be stricter punishment on repeat stunt-driving offenders that “are not going to learn.”
He wants steeper fines, long impounding and a potential permanent loss of licence for repeat offenders to be included in the Highway Traffic Act.
In Ontario, convicted stunt drivers face a licence suspension of one to three years for a first offence, three to 10 years for a second offence, a lifetime suspension that can be reduced for a third offence and a non-reduceable lifetime suspension for a fourth offence.
Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo said a shortage of police officers is another challenge when addressing stunt driving. “In the future, if we reach adequate staffing levels, it might not need to be a targeted program anymore,” he said. Lo said that Ottawa has the lowest officer to resident ratio of major cities in Canada.
Mississauga Coun. Stephen Dasko has taken a different tack, saying the push against loud vehicles and stunt driving needs to be “more meaningful” than tickets and fines. He says he is pushing to ban of mufflers that exceed 80 decibels in the Highway Traffic Act.
Dasko said that banning mufflers that exceed 80 decibels needs to be provincial legislation because, if it were only a municipal bylaw, it would be difficult to enforce. “Either you allow them and there’s no problem or you don’t allow them and you really put your foot down on it,” he said.
Dasko said that banning the sale of mufflers exceeding 80 decibels provincewide is the “first step” to getting rid of the excessive noise that goes along with speeding driers.
As for Ottawa, Hill said “the ideal number of stunt driving cases is 0” and he will continue to work towards that goal. Lo encouraged residents to continue to submit police reports to help guide the enforcement process.
