“Obstruct Plate”

I got a ticket for obstruct plate on morning of Feb 4 2009. I was driving in front of a police officer who was wearing sun glasses. He pulled me over and insisted he cannot see my plate but it was just some dirt or salt. Is it possible for me to fight the ticket? Also I went on york.ca to check the ticket but it says that the offence not found. It has been over 10 days since i got the ticket so I want to know how long does it take normally for it to show up on the website and is there another way i could check the ticket?

Sounds like you were charged with 13(2).

Number plates, further violations

No other numbers to be exposed

13

Number plate to be kept clean

(2) Every number plate shall be kept free from dirt and obstruction and shall be affixed so that the entire number plate, including the numbers, is plainly visible at all times, and the view of the number plate shall not be obscured or obstructed by spare tires, bumper bars, any part of the vehicle, any attachments to the vehicle or the load carried. 1994, c. 27, s. 138 (7).

Offence

(4) Every person who contravenes subsection (2), (3), (3.0.1) or (3.1) is guilty of an offence. 1993, c. 31, s. 2 (5); 1996, c. 1, Sched. E, s. 2 (2); 1998, c. 38, s. 2 (2).

Please confirm that 13(2) is what you were charged with. It is in the middle of the yellow ticket, handwritten, following "Contrary to:". If the officer had laid the charge contrary to any of 13(3) then he wrote the wrong offense, and "Obstruct the plate" specifies any device, while 13(2) specifically states "...kept free from dirt...", unless 13(4) was used.

The charge does not carry demerit points. What is the fine amount? If you really want to fight the charge, what you should have done is taken the photograph of your license at the day of the offence to prove that the plate is visible. Have you cleaned the plate yet? If not - don't.

You have 15 days after the ticket was written to decide to fight or pay the ticket. Suggest look up and get the exact date, you should still have a couple days. If you blow your 15 days though you cannot fight the ticket anymore - it's gonna be an appeal. If you want to try to fight it you have to either hand in the ticket at the Provincial court office or mail it there (at the address on the back of your ticket), with the 3-rd option ("I wish to dispute my ticket" or similar) checked off.

If you can get the message across that the plate was visible without the sunglasses (glare reflection on the shades, faded but visible numbers from salt, etc), then you can win this case. Insurance implications are nil.

About york.ca - that is a municipal website. You were charged with a provincial offense. Neither your ticket nor your offense can be found there. You should find municipal by-laws there, including parking information and infraction notices, but not the provincial OHTA. To check the ticket you have to hand it to a cop, or to a court (clerk?), to look up.

Give us some details, date, time of day, place, direction, weather conditions, etc... All of these can be important to decide whose eyes the sun was blinding, and whose rear plates were cast in the shade. You did mention LEO was wearing shades (no pun intended), was there a need for them?

racer wrote: You did mention LEO was wearing shades (no pun intended), was there a need for them?

So this person is now the officer's optometrist?

hwybear wrote:

racer wrote: You did mention LEO was wearing shades (no pun intended), was there a need for them?

So this person is now the officer's optometrist?

Nope, as in "would you need shades on that day" was what I meant lol.

Sort half on topic.....coworked (a clone of me....i coached him ) came into court and had sunglasses on. I mentioned it to him.....turned out there is new presciption type glasses that react to sunlight and go dark and then go clear once indoors after about 5min.....interesting!

Oh yeah, I saw te commercials of those on the TV a few times. Useless things for me, I don't need glasses (knock on wood). But I doubt that these self-tinting shades come in this shape:

The offence notice shows 13(2) and the fine amount is $110. Unfortunately I had already clean my plates so I wont have any prove. By "insurance implications are nil", you mean only if I fight the ticket or not fight the ticket?

After8 wrote:The offence notice shows 13(2) and the fine amount is $110. Unfortunately I had already clean my plates so I wont have any prove. By "insurance implications are nil", you mean only if I fight the ticket or not fight the ticket?

Normally if you win the fight, your ticket is null and void, so no insurance implications whatever the ticket you received (and successfully defended). The offenses that have insurance implications are: speeding, Careless driving, DUI, even Seatbelt, anything that has demerit points associated with it! You can check with "Demerit Points" link we have on the bottom of the site which violations have demerit points associated with them. Obviously, a seatbelt ticket won't increase your insurance rate as much as Careless or Speeding 50+ might. These offenses are termed "Moving violations", that means that the vehicle was in motion (and therefore had a chance of being involved in a collision). Some companies have different policies, such as allowing the 1-st minor ticket slide or whatnot.

Some tickets have no insurance implications (like parking tickets). These tickets are termed "non-moving violations" and will not increase your insurance rates. This can be "Imporper brake light", etc.

This is not a "Moving violation", it has no points associated with it. Whether you fight or not, your insurance will not (or I should say, should not) increase, but some companies have different policies.. Give them an anonymous call and ask whether such an offence will increase your insurance. By anonymous I mean dial their 1-800 number from a Bell payphone (it's free for you, but not for them, but what do you care anyway?) and not tell them your name (just in case I was wrong here)...

Normally we would want to fight a traffic ticket:

a) When you are not guilty

b) not to loose the license

c) to avoid insurance hike

Since there are no points associated with it, b) is gone. This is not a moving violation, but I do not even know what insurance company you're with (quite frankly I don't really need to know - you need to deal with them), so c) is out of question again. That leaves us with the question of whether or not you are completely innocent.

You do not need to prove complete innocence. All you have to do is to cast a reasonable doubt as to whether the officer was in a position to clearly see your license plate. If he was wearing sunglasses, and you were both driving towards the sun (so, eastward in the morning, southward midday, or west in the afternoon), then you can cast a reasonable doubt as to LEO's ability to properly see the license plates that were cast in a shade by the car, while LEO was wearing sunglasses further reducing his ability to see darkened objects.

What about a ticket for the very top of the word Ontario being covered by the dealership plate holder , can they actually give a ticket for such an assinine reason ? What is best way to fight it ?

CoolChick wrote:What about a ticket for the very top of the word Ontario being covered by the dealership plate holder , can they actually give a ticket for such an assinine reason ? What is best way to fight it ?

Any sort of alteration to the plate can be ticketed - this includes dealer signs, transparent/translucent covers, even if a kid took a magic marker to the plate. I'm not sure if the old "fixit" tickets are still valid - the ones where you had a certain number of days to show that you are now in compliance with the law and no fine would be given. The courts are now discouraging several types of those goodwill tickets, or so I'm told by a TPS officer.

hwybear wrote:Sort half on topic.....coworked (a clone of me....i coached him ) came into court and had sunglasses on. I mentioned it to him.....turned out there is new presciption type glasses that react to sunlight and go dark and then go clear once indoors after about 5min.....interesting!

They've been around for a while; I remember first seeing one in the mid-90s. Since I have 20/15 vision and don't need corrective lenses, I felt dorky wearing clear glasses indoors.

Now I wear shooting glasses in the sun which look even more dorky to anyone except gun nuts and Earl Strickland.

Doesn't this type of ticket fly in the face of our rights? Doesn't any 'crime' have to have a valid cause of action?

For instance, doesn't a 'crime' have to have caused harm loss or injury to a person ? I find many of these traffic tickets to be quite unlawful. How does a licence plate with few bugs for example stuck over a number constitute a person having been harmed in any way? Surely this can't be right !

Due to recent happenings on another matter I am really getting to the point where I firmly believe our rights and freedoms are being abused regularly for monetary gain by provinces, courts and the like. Anyone else feel this way ?

Having a dirty plate isn't a criminal offense (no criminal record associated with it obviously) so therefore it is not a crime. Yeah that's basically the definition of a crime: something that the government deems to be a criminal offense.

But isn't it deemed to be an offence ? Isn't all statute law supposed to be based on common law to protect rights and freedoms ? What I mean is.... what actually defines a valid charge criminal or otherwise ?

Shouldn't we be told why a bug on our licence plate is an offence and if it is an offence shouldn't it be due to the fact that it has caused harm injury or loss? Traffic Acts appear to conflict with common law and bill of rights which is what our laws and statutes are supposed to protect. I thought all Acts were supposed to reflect our rights as per common law. The more I read the more I understand and the more I understand the more violation of our rights is what I see.

A dirty plate may not be criminal but I think the Act that tells us it is an offence most definately is, imo.

I thought Common Law depicted whether or not something was a crime and governments are supposed to uphold the elements of Common Law.... and this doesn't appear to be the case with many Acts passed thru parliament. I really think we are being hoodwinked on many many levels. i also find it odd that for Common Law direct crimes/offences the penalty is jail, probation etc and possibly a fine also. But the penalty for all Act/Statute offences is always a monetary penalty. Does anyone else find this interesting ?

Just for fun, I've been taking note of rear number plates recently. (Many cars pass me on the highway: I am a boring driver.) It's remarkably consistent -- just about 60 percent have some part of the wording on the plate obscured and the drivers are thus vulnerable to a conviction. I'm not talking about the "dirt" provision -- every driver can be nailed for that, practically all the time -- but the common number plate frames that many cars carry.

My own plates are OK in that respect because I got rid of the dealer frames when I realized the danger, but because of the quality of their construction ("shoddy" comes to mind), the word "Ontario" on the rear plate after years of exposure on a succession of vehicles is not easy to read because of rust. The Act says nothing about rust. Would "and obstruction" in 13(2) be sufficient to get me? Can I get these plates, with this number, replaced? (They are not vanity plates: nothing that I am vain about would lend itself to advertisement on the highways.)

We have an old plate that holds sentimental value (first plate ever issued) and we did get a warning about the rust, but no ticket. I have since cleaned up the majority of the rust and moved the worse of the set to the front, but now the paint looks very faded, though still legible. I'm also curious if non-vanity-plates can be replaced, and whether we would be allowed to keep the old ones.