Speed Limits in Canada
If you are an American and see a speed limit of “100” while travelling in Canada, that doesn’t mean you can go 100 miles/hour. This means 100 kilometres/hour and translates to just a bit more than 60 mph. In general, you can convert from km/h to mph by dividing the speed in km/h by 1.6.
|Kilometers per hour||Miles per hour|
120 kilometers per hour is the fastest you can go on a Canadian highway. The province of Ontario is especially strict, with maximum speed of 100 km/h. If you are caught driving 50 kilometers per hour over the posted limit in Ontario your car will be impounded. Below are typical speed limits you will see on Canadian roads.
|Type of Driving||Kilometers per hour||Miles per hour|
|Multi-lane highway driving||110 km/h||66 mph|
|Most 2-lane highways outside cities & towns||80 km/h||50 mph|
|Major roads in urban and suburban areas||60 – 70 km/h||37 – 44 mph|
|Residential streets||40 – 50 km/h||25 – 30 mph|
|School zones||30-50 km/h||20-30 mph|
Speed Limits in the United States
Below are typical speed limits you will see in the United States. Only a few freeways allow you to go faster than 65 miles per hour and they tend to be in long, open, stretches of roadway.
|Miles per hour||Kilometers per hour|
|Type of Driving||Miles per hour||Kilometers per hour|
|Multi-lane highway driving||55 – 70 mph||88 – 118 km/h|
|Most 2-lane highways outside cities & towns||55 – 65 mph||88 – 105 km/h|
|Major roads in urban and suburban areas||25 – 45 mph||40 – 72 km/h|
|Residential streets||25 – 35 mph||40 – 56 km/h|
|School zones||15 – 25 mph||23 – 40 km/h|
In addition to maximum speed limits, there are sometimes default minimum speed limits. You will see that most often on freeways where the minimum speed may be 45 mph. Most jurisdictions also have laws prohibiting speeds so low they are dangerous or impede the normal and reasonable flow of traffic.