Stunt driving 150 in a 100.. unmarked tailgated me. help

so last night i was driving home at around 1am

i was going 120 in a 100 when a car started tailgating me (almost bumper to bumper)

i sped up in order to put some distance between us but it wouldnt leave me alone for over 10 minutes.

i was exhausted and not paying attention to my speed guage i ended up accelerating

to 140 then 150 and at 150 the car tailgating me turned ou to be an unmarked police car which

pulled me over and charged me for speeding and stunt driving then took away my license and car

for 7 days

im a 19 year old female, g2, no previous offenses is there anything i can do to fight this fight?

on a side note i think its horrible how police vehicales entrapt people like this.

I think youd be best consulting with a paralegal. They could review the case for possible defences or more likely work out a plea deal.

I personally dont think your reasoning is a valid defence. If someone is riding on your bumper speeding up is the last thing you want to do. If youre concerned about your safety youd either want to gradually slow down or simply pull over to let the vehicle pass. It certainly isn't entrapment.

I believe that fear for life (or might be safety) is a valid defence to speeding charge. I don't remember the exact wording but it should be in the HTA.

If you state that you saw this dark car behind you with tinted window, and you have a reason to fear that it is someone who is targetting you (for kidnapping, rape, robbery, or to shoot you dead), then you can speed due to the risk to your life.

Never saw this defence being used, but you might be able to frame it properly. It would have been virtually impossible to use this defence if it was a clearly marked police car behind you that you couldn't have mistaken for a criminal's car

This is just my opinion, you might want to get some proper legal advise on what defence will be best for you.

Regards,

You're still looking at a 30-day license suspension with a realistic plea-deal of +49kph

it is 1AM according to the OP, can not tell whether the car behind is marked or not or tinted windows....

Even better.. as long as she couldn't tell whether that was a friend/relative's car, a police or other official car, or a stolen car in the progress of committing a crime

and this would be the time to use the exempion for cellphone use and call 911 and ask if there is a cruiser behind you!! NOT speed up

I guess she could But my argument would be if this is the case, then why have the exception embedded under the speeding clause at all?

The Justice must apply the law, not make the law. If he thinks that this exception under the rule of speeding must be removed, he should write a letter to the provincial parliament, but it remains valid until the law is modified.

I have yet to see this "exemption" you speak of .....if you can put a link to the section for all members, exemptions under the HTA 128 (speeding) is for emergency vehicles and HTA OREG 455/07 (stunt regulation) is for emergency vehicles

I'll have to look it up as I said I don't remember the specifics. But this is a general principle in law that applies to anything short of murder. There were cases that spoke of this, there is also a criteria such as:

1. fear must be genuine, not something you just made up so you can commit the said offence

2. the eminent danger must be to the defendant

3. The evil prevented should be more than the evil done.

4. No more than reasonable evil can be done to avoid the eminent threat or danger (i.e., if she needs to speed to 150 to lose the guy, she can't justify going 240 km)

An analogy to this defence is the Self-Defence clause, where you can defend the use of force to assault someone, if you are facing the eminent danger of being assaulted yourself. Only difference is that Self-Defence may in some situation apply to murder as well, while the above principle can't.

That's all I know.. sorry I don't know where the clause is specifically to post a link

What youre talking about isnt an actual exemption under the HTA, but rather one of the few defences available for an absolute liability offence. A defence of duress however places the onus on the defendant to show they reasonably feared for their life and their actions taken were reasonable. So while the defence is available to the OP, you cant simply say that it might have been a criminal following you.

Correct. And the onus would be on the defendant to prove the duress as you stated.

Check out this scenario, I don't know the chance of success but it sounds reasonable to use. After all, it all depends on the defendant and the circumstances:

I could see someone saying that they saw a dark looking, unknown vehicle tailgating them too closely at 1 a.m. in the morning with very few (if any) vehicles driving by. The tailgating was too close that it would have been a danger to hit the brake in a highway at that speed.

OP tried to speed a tiny bit hoping to maintain a safe distance from the other unknown car in case of a sudden break due any unforeseen circumstances but to no avail, the unknown, dark vehicle sped up to drive again to stick to the OP's bumper. The OP started to fear for her safety, she notices that the actions of the unknown vehicle leave no doubt that this car is targetting her. She worries that after leaving the club (or restaurant, or wherever she was), maybe she was targetted as a potential prey for rapists. She was worried she'll end up being raped or worse.

At the circumstances, with no doubt that she is being targetted by the unknown vehicle, the only option for her is to try to flee and hope to see a police patrol on the highway or reach a police station. (Who knows whether she had a phone with her to dial 911 or whether she even had a chance to do so).

After speeding up, the unknown vehicle turned its police emergency lights on. She then felt safe to stop as it is a police car and her fears for being raped would now diminish. She then slowed down and stopped at the officer's request.

What do you guys think of this defence?

N.B: I sped up once after being tailgaited by a cop. That was 8 years ago. I was anxious to have that officer on the stand for cross examination but unfortunately he resigned before the trial. So he escaped the exercise

FYI, I've seen that particular defence (or versions of it) attempted on more than one occasion in court. I have yet to see it succeed.

Hi radar identified, can you share with us the reason why that defense didn't succeed in the occasion you witnessed? Was it that the justice wasn't satisfied that reasonably the danger was in fact eminent or real? Or did he say something about the legality of the defense?

Just curious

Hi taikora,

Can you elaborate a little bit. If the speed limit is 100, you were likely on a controlled access highway with multiple lanes in each direction. Were you alone in the car? What lane were you traveling in when the boggy latched on to your bumper and stuck like glue? What was the road lighting like? What was traffic like? Did you change lanes? Did you pass any off ramps or rest stops? Did you take any evasive action other than speeding up? How familiar are you with the general area? Would the cop agree that you maxed out at 150?

Usually, when they come screaming up behind you, they're running your plate. That's the time to be cool. Don't brake because you'll look guilty. If you have to scrub speed, blip the throttle and shift down. But, don't speed up. Not a lot of non-cops do that stick-to-your-bumper thing on a multi-lane highway unless there's beaucoupe d traffic and you are parked in the left lane. (And I do wish that police would hand out more tickets for slow left lane driving; is there ever a campaign for that?) At 1 am, a cop is probably thinking booze and you darned well better be under whatever limit applies. If he's already running your plate, be prepared for a stop and be prepared to answer questions about alcohol. Assuming no impairment issues, 120 in a 100 is not going to get his dander up. But 150 usually is. It's better all the way around if no one's dander is up.

If you really did max out at 150, you can probably get a couple of km/h knocked off. Even with that, this is going to be bad news for a 19yo G2's insurance Also, don't tell them [insurance] the whole story; it's going to be construed as a propensity to race. The question that will arise is: what is the end game for losing the douche bag on your tail? One sixty? One Seventy? Very high speed drift through an off ramp?

Same thing happened to me but I didn't receive a ticket...

http://www.ontariohighwaytrafficact.com/topic4160.html

Always a good idea to back off.

And I can honestly say I didn't feel threatened by this other car but was annoyed. I'm sure that if I had felt threatened in some way (for example, if he had followed me off to the shoulder), I would have dialled 911 immediately and kept a close eye on him. If I had needed to take evasive action, including speeding, I would have had kept 911 informed as to what was going on. In this sense, I think I would have had a strong case if the LEO charged me with speeding - I would have proof with my 911 calls that I was concerned.

But without proof like this, I think it would be hard to explain you used speed because you were scared, IMHO.

The only part that seems unfair to me is that they waited until she hit 150 before pulling her over and charging her. Surely she is already breaking the law at 120 so pull her over if she is speeding or acting in a suspicious manner (like you suspect intoxication). Why not pull her over at 130, 140, 145? Isn't it a responsibility to prevent further offences, like you see a guy with a gun do you wait until they shoot it before you arrest them? More serious perhaps but allowing them to keep going faster when they are already speeding just seems like waiting to see how fast they will go, which seems a bit irresponsible. Unless she floored it and went from 120 to 150 pretty quick, not sure what she was driving. Also surely the police car is also speeding, which is justified for the purpose of pulling over the other speeding car, but they must have then proceeded to keep pace until she hit 150 which also seems a little irresponsible if they could have ended the situation earlier.

Not necessarily any defence, as you say on a multi lane highway at that time of night it is unlikely there was gridlock traffic prventing you from pulling over to let them pass if you thought it was a crazy person tailgating you. My borther inlaw had a crazy person tailgating them on the way home recently, honking their horn, pulling in front and slowing down. Not sure why, maybe they thought they were someone else, but he just pulled over and they carried on their way.

skywalker12 wrote:

Hi radar identified, can you share with us the reason why that defense didn't succeed in the occasion you witnessed? Was it that the justice wasn't satisfied that reasonably the danger was in fact eminent or real? Or did he say something about the legality of the defense?

My notes aren't the greatest but here's what I have. Essentially hk111 hit the nail on the head: If someone is tailgating you, what is the end game for getting rid of them?

In two of the cases I saw, the drivers were in the left most lane and did not make any effort to move to the right. The JP ruled their basis for "I feared for my life" (or words to that effect) was not reasonable, because they did not take any effort to see if the person followed them into another lane. An aggressive driver in the left lane often just wants other drivers to move out of the way, or might be goading them into a race. Instead, the two defendants kept going faster. They also had a legal obligation to move right when a faster moving car approached from behind, which, they failed to do. One of them, when asked, said: "I don't move over for nobody." Why not? "Other drivers go too damn fast." FYI: He was caught going 226. IRONY MUCH?

The third case involved a person who likely had histronic AND paranoid personality disorder, and her theatrics in court pretty much did her in. She claimed (with full waterworks) that because she is so "beautiful" she is "stalked all the time" and she often has to try to outrun these types of people. I think you can imagine how that ended... No wonder the cops call it "Kangaroo Court."