OHTA.ca

Hello, I need some advice..

Tonight I was driving home on the QEW with cruise control set to approx 105kmph (+-5 due to speedo inaccuracies i guess). The speed was 100 and there were a row of 6-8 cars driving in the middle lane at about 80kmph.

I went into the left lane to pass, and as I was coming up to the third vechicle from the front of the line, it flashed it's cherries for two seconds and I noticed it was a police. I slowed down to 90 before passing him and continued past the line of cars and moved back to the middle lane.

The officer then pulled me over, told me how he was on a call to an accident and i would wind up wrapped around a tree if i kept driving like this. he told me i wasnt getting the point and he'd have to give me a ticket. he took my insurance, ownership and license back to the cruiser, and came back with a careless driving ticket.

I do not feel I was driving unsafely. I have had my full license for 10 years and have never been in an accident which I was at fault in, and feel I can judge the safe speed of the road. If I felt it was too snowy I would have slowed, there was some snow on the highway but I have snow tires and wasn't having any troubles being in control of my car.

Clearly I need to fight this.. How should I go about doing it? Do I need a lawyer, or will a paralegal suffice such as x-copper?

There is a form at the bottom of every page on this site to get in touch with a paralegal. You do want to fight this as it can really #$%^ your insurance rates.

katm wrote:I do not feel I was driving unsafely. I have had my full license for 10 years and have never been in an accident which I was at fault in, and feel I can judge the safe speed of the road. If I felt it was too snowy I would have slowed, there was some snow on the highway but I have snow tires and wasn't having any troubles being in control of my car.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law 100 is the maximum when it's sunny and warm. Reality, 120 is the norm. So, the officer has a point to an extent. If anything you were guilty of "Too fast for conditions".....but you were not charged with that. I believe you can get this tossed.....

Reflections wrote:Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law 100 is the maximum when it's sunny and warm. Reality, 120 is the norm. So, the officer has a point to an extent. If anything you were guilty of "Too fast for conditions".....but you were not charged with that. I believe you can get this tossed.....

Thanks Reflections. Do you know what other charge could apply instead / which I might get it dropped to? I've looket at HTA and don't see any charges for too fast for conditions, maybe I'm missing something.

Thanks

I have only heard of the charge, i'll have to dig too.....perhaps someone else could help me here......

Either way, I don't see you being convicted of careless...it's too hard to prove

I find it very easy to prove.

Driving without due care and attention........

It appears that officer "concluded" that you were travelling too fast for the weather conditions. The door is certainly open for the defence on this one.

If driving on snow means I'm careless then we had better stop driving in the winter.

My driving instructor, back in the day, told us drive at a pace that you feel comfortable at. This year will be 17 years of driving for me and I've gone through some serious weather, gotta get to hockey right??

This is Ontario and we get snow every year and I'd like to think that some of us are used to driving on it by now.

And if this comes down to driver ability, please bring on the tests........I'm sure my insurance company would love to lower mine or your rates.

I've obtained representation who seems very confident they can handle this for me. Thanks for the advice everyone.

In the meantime, I'm completely in the dark as to how fast I am allowed to drive!