“Is It Worth Contacting Ticket Officer?”

I got a speeding ticket today while I was at a stand still.

I had to stop as there was an elderly gentleman walking accross the left lane I was in. I could clearly see the speed trap up the hill as well as the en-mass brake lights from the vehicles ahead. I then accelerated up the hill and watched the speedometer. I never went above 60KM/H, speed limit is 50 I know but I'm trying to be honest. The officer walked out and flagged me down. TBH I was stunned because I was certain she was flagging down the car ahead of me that had passed me on the right side as I waited for the pedestrian.

I tried to quickly explain to the officer what happened but she brushed my statement off and proceeded to write me the ticket and showing me going 74KM/H. Her exact words were "Trust me, I saw you before you saw me" which makes no sense as I was at a complete stop.

Now as the subject asks. Do you feel there's any value in me trying to contact the officer and requesting a "sit down" so I could try to explain this to her? Is this even a doable thing in Ontario? I imagine not but is miss-clocking actually a common occurence?

Any other advice would be appreciated.

Adam

Wholly *EDIT* the almost exact same thing happened to me today ... female cop, 74KM/H and everything, except I was going 60KM and wasn't stopped..

Was this in York Region you got this, that's where I got mine

Don't talk to the constable. Once you are ticketed, they want nothing to do with you until the court date. By the way, if you go to court and say "I wasn't doing 74 in a 50 zone; I was doing 59," you openly admit to violating HTA Sec. 128 and are automatically found guilty.

No I was in Hamilton.

Yeah I had no intention of specifying exactly how fast I know I was going, I was merely conveying that I for a fact know I wasn't going anywhere near 70KM/H let alone 74.

Thanks for the info FiReSTaRT, I'll just ride it out into court...

So aggrevating though. I'd be happy to pay the fine if I had actually done it. Really isn't a good feeling getting hit when I KNOW I didn't do anything and it basically boils down to her word against mine.

Put together some notes on the situation. I'd be interested to know just how far away the officer took the speed reading and what type of device was used - you can find this out through a disclosure request. It's possible that she got the two cars confused, particularly since the one guy passed you. Depending on whether she was using radar or lidar, she might've aimed the device improperly and caught a reading off the other vehicle, or simply was staring at the radar readout, saw 74, looked up, saw you in the left lane and assumed you must've been "the one."

Rough Google map estimate shows her at about 500 - 600 meters away. Yeah I'm going to have to research how to go about making that request. Hopefully it's not too arduous.

See the disclosure first.

Also, this is posted in wrong forum. Moving it to Speeding 16-29.

I had put it in general originally as the topic of the post was more about the viability of contacting the ticketing officer and discussing the ticket. It wasn't really about the ticket itself.