Ontario Provincial Police Staff Sergeant Dean Korn has seen a lot of strange things in his quarter century on the job, but nothing quite like what he experienced Thursday.
Korn pulled over a speeding driver on eastbound Hwy 407. He gave a 45-year-old man a lecture and a ticket. And then it happened again a few minutes later with the same driver.
Korn first spotted a Toyota Corolla going too fast near Weston Rd at 6:51 a.m.. Korn registered the driving going between 140 and 144 km/h on the 100 km/h highway and pulled him over near Jane St.
"The guy was not impaired or anything like that, it was just excessive speed," Korn tells NEWSTALK 1010. Korn says the driver's actions were especially unsafe because it was still dark and the highway was wet and slushy in spots from an earlier snowfall.
After a discussion and a speeding ticket, the staff sergeant believed the driver understood the error of his ways.
So after they both merged back onto the highway, Korn was surprised to see the Corolla getting smaller and smaller on the highway ahead of him.
Korn says he accelerated his cruiser to catch up with the driver and found he was going 133 km/h. At 7:03 a.m. Korn pulled the driver over for a second time some 4 km from their first roadside stop.
"He was very upset that he was stopped again and did not feel that he should have had a second charge," Korn says. When asked why he was speeding immediately after being told the speed limit and warned to slow down, Korn says the G-licensed driver said he thought the speed limit was 120 km/h.
"I've never had this particular circumstance before where a person was stopped twice within a couple of minutes for the exact same offence and not seeming to grasp the totality of what they had done in endangering everybody around them and themselves," Korn says.
Between the two traffic stops the driver is looking at some $500 in fines and eight demerit points