“Mva - Given A 'failure To Stop At A Red' But Light Was Green”

I hope someone here might be able to offer some advice on our situation.

My family was involved in a motor vehicle accident on Friday in Toronto. The intersection where the accident happened is very busy all the time and it was also the start of Friday rush hour at the time.

We were travelling North on "X" Street and the other vehicle was travelling West on "A" street.

We had a green light and proceeded straight into the intersection. We were t-boned and our vehicle rolled 4 times. Thankfully none of the 5 passengers was seriously injured.

Once the police arrived the person driving the vehicle that hit us kept coming up to us and asking "What happened? I don't know what happened.". My husband kept telling him to speak with police and not us.

My husband gave his statement 3 times. At the end of the third statement he was told there was some "bad news", that an "un-biased" witness had stayed behind. She says she was driving behind the guy who hit us. She says their light (hers and his) was green.

We are sure our light was green. POSITIVE.

The police officer told my husband that if he had to make his decision based on my husbands statement and the other drivers statement he would have sided with us and considered the other guy at fault. He said his hands were tied though because of the "un-biased" witness. And as such, he had to ticket us and consider us at fault. He told my husband he believed him but he had no choice. He told my husband to fight it. He also only ticketed for "failure to stop at a red" and not "careless" and whatever else he could have if he truly thought we caused such a horrible accident.

How will this affect our insurance? I am assuming if we do not fight it our insurance will go up like crazy.

What about if we do fight it? It seems as though the 'evidence' against us is flimsy at best. This one lady is apparently the only thing they have.

We DO absolutely plan to fight it since our light was GREEN, asking the above questions just to understand the differences between the two. I.E. will our insurance go up regardless of whether we fight the ticket or not? I don't want to spend thousands of dollars to fight it, get it reduced or thrown out and find out the impact on our insurance is still the same. You know?

Regarding the accident the things that make NO sense to us at all - if this guy had a green why were there NO other cars from his street in the intersection on either side? Literally everyone else was behind the white line. He says he hit us at 40km / hour but our vehicle was impacted hard enough to roll 4 times. There were NO skid marks, and seemingly no attempt on his part to break. It would seem that if he was in the "right" and going through a green while paying attention and looking straight he would have breaked at least. Why were there NO other witnesses on our side, behind us, beside us, who saw the accident?

Again, we maintain that the light was fully green for us. We are sure.

The police seemed more concerned with getting traffic moving again than anything else and we feel we were unfairly considered responsible.

What can we do? Can we fight this ticket and win? If they dismiss it will our insurance rates stay the same as before the accident?

Please help if you can.

Fyi Fighting and winning the ticket in court may not change the blame for the accident. Ticket or not the insurance companies may kdetermine you are at fault.

That is up to the insurance companies.

OPS

Sounds like the officer did his investigation, spoke with all parties (including an independent witness) and formed grounds that the driver of your vehicle broke the law. I probably would have too, based on the information you provided, because of the independent witness. Whether that will be enough to convict the driver of your vehicle in court depends on the credibility of the independent witness and the strength of any other evidence the police may have for the charge. That will be weighed against any evidence you can bring, even if that is just the testimony of the driver and passengers of your vehicle. In the end the judge will weigh all the evidence and determine if the charge was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Whether or not that will happen depends largely on how the evidence spins out in court, so no one here can give you anything more definitive then that.