OHTA.ca

Hi all! Welcome to my thread.

Thanks for reading this. I was driving NB on a countryside road east of Scarborough in a very quiet part of the GTA, and not in a residential area. This particular road is one way in both directions, and in the section where it happened, it also has double yellow lines; with a speed limit of 50. However, I take this road every day for school, and everyone speeds and drives at around 75+ as it is a long stretch of road. On this day, there was an Accord in front of me, and beyond it, an Audi A5 and a Tesla. The Audi A5 had moved to overtake the Tesla crossing the double yellow since the Tesla had stopped still on the road. As the Audi drove off, the Tesla then floored it (I think it was the ludicrous speed mode) and almost crashed (his tail end gave out twice). Meanwhile, the Honda Accord was extremely hesitant to continue forward and would drive at around 40. As the two sped off, I sped up to overtake the very slow Accord (since it was going roughly 40-50), and used my indicators. I was lasered going 98 while overtaking, speeding by 48 in a 50.

I don't know how to approach this ticket. Although I understand that the law doesn't care about being fair as I was still speeding at the end of the day, I was not being careless in the same sense as someone recklessly speeding on a neighborhood or residential road. I was not cruising at that high speed down the road continuously, was caught at the peak of my acceleration, and I was not behaving aggressively beyond trying to overtake the accord. However, I recognize that I was speeding so I would like to argue this down to a speeding by 10-19 over, realistically and with fairness.

How should I approach this situation? Legal council? Meet with CP?

I'm hesitant to my next steps due to the fact that even given the opportunity to explain my rationale, I was caught crossing the double yellow line, and I feel that the court can also just go "Be lucky you were caught with 98 in a 50 and not careless driving/stunt driving regardless".

Thanks and take care!

EDIT: This is the road in question -- there is no traffic, and no intersections (except for the road into a private property where the officer was at).

You'll probably be offered a reduction and it will have nothing to do with your story or the context of the situation. You sped up to overtake a "very slow" Accord doing 40-50km (a.k.a the speed limit). It's not exactly a sympathetic explanation, but it's irrelevant either way. Speeding is speeding. If a reduction is what you're looking for, you won't have to get into a whole story. They likely offer you one for just showing up. However, they aren't in the business of reducing speeding charges by 60-80%. Maybe they'll offer you something like 29km over.

You can always request a trial, request disclosure, and go from there. If you're satisfied with a reduction and want to get it over with asap, you can always seek an early resolution.