OHTA.ca

On July 29, 2015 at about 9:15 PM, I was travelling home on the main street (it is a four lane, 50km/hr road). I noticed that there was a collision, there was a firetruck on the scene and about 3 or 4 police cars. Someone on a motorcycle had been struck be a car, from what I saw the ambulance had already taken the people to the hospital (which coincidently was just about 2 minutes up the street).

Anyways the police had the other side of the road blocked for the accident (which would be on-coming traffic). The side I was on was not blocked, there were 100% positively no signs or barriers indicating that my side was blocked. There was a car ahead of me that continued going straight up the main street, I was following behind it. At an intersection about ½ a km from the scene of the accident was a police officer blocking oncoming traffic (since that side was blocked). He starting yelling at the car ahead of me saying that the road was closed, and really being extremely mean. I knew I was next, so now it was my turn to get yelled at.

The police officer approached my car and started yelling at me extremely aggressively (I had not even said a word yet). He said "this road is closed and you are not supposed to be on it, you could get six demerit points and a $315 dollar fine". He was being extremely aggressive, I just said "there were no signs or barriers indicating that the road was closed". He screamed at me saying "did you not see the flashing lights". May I add he had the exactly same speech to the car ahead of me just moments before. I said sorry, and I left after that since I was getting extremely frustrated and ready to blow. Essentially I was getting screamed at because the police had not put up the proper barriers yet (or at least used a police car to block the road). I was getting yelled at for their mistake. May I add the police station was also only about ½ a km away, and at this point the accident had been going on for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Just for the record I rode by on my bike about 30 minutes after and I noticed they had all the roads properly blocked.

Obviously the top priority thing here is the accident itself and if anyone seriously got hurt, I have not seen anything on our local newspaper website as of yet. Since I live in a relatively small town.

Putting that aside and for anyone reading this forum in years to come, as of July 29, 2015 is there such a ticket (in Ontario) where one could get six points and a $315 dollar fine from this? I think the ticket would be "Failing to obey the directions of a police officer" and according to the official Ontario MTO website that is only three demerit points. I read somewhere else that it is usually about an $85 dollar fine, but I do not know how old that information is.

Luckily I did not get a ticket, which I personally think is because he knew I was right. Has anyone ever had a police officer be this aggressive to them (even though they did nothing wrong)? And has anyone heard of this six point $315 dollar ticket? I can find nothing about which makes me believe he just made it up, possibly a power trip? He mentioned the same ticket to the car ahead of us as well. I feel sorry for some little old granny that would have made this mistake. The only other ticket that I can find that would be close would be the seven point "Failing to stop for police", but I think that is if you run from them. Besides that ticket is supposedly a $1000+ anyways, which he was saying $315 and six points.

Thanks for your time.

I won't get into the state of affairs you note - only to say that it sounds like he's confused - I suspect he's talking Careless and misquoting the old fine of 260.-- taxed up to 325.00 - Careless comes with 6 points. Had he given you a Careless ticket with a fine of 315.00 the advice from this forum would have been to completely ignore it.

Just off curiosity, when you say "advice from this forum would have been to completely ignore it" does that mean don't worry about it since I would have never have been convicted, and it would have easily of been dismissed with in court, since it was so ridiculous?

Just for the record as of 12:45 PM (July 30th) there has been no news on this collision, that leads me to believe that it was not fatal. The news has other collisions listed since that one and new news listed since.

What Karra is saying is a fine of $315 is incorrect for the offence of Careless Driving. If that's what he wrote, the ticket should be thrown due to incorrect fine. It's one of those bizarre twists of the law/court system... in Ontario, if your ticket has an incorrect fine on it, if you walk in to court and say "hey, the fine is wrong," the court can fix it. However, if you ignore it and default, the Justice of the Peace is supposed to check the ticket to see if the critical components (the fine is one of them) are correct; if not, the ticket is supposed to be thrown out. Confused yet?

As for the officer's reaction, I'd probably file a complaint. They need to properly shut down the highway, and given your statement that you didn't drive around any barriers or warning signs, his reaction was both unreasonable and entirely uncalled for.

To the bigger picture....you describe this as 4 lanes wide which is huge width to block.....I have often encountered this on the other perspective on a 2 lane road, we have minimal units and have to shut the road down, we do the best we can with the resources we have immediately at hand ( cruiser, maybe pylons and/or flares), we have called for road crews to bring signs and they get there when they can, so in meantime we do what we can. We are trying to preserve scene evidence and prevent contamination from other unnecessary traffic.

these can often be criminal matters.

I have had drivers drive around the either end of my cruiser with all my lights on, they have driven between flares.

The police station being so close means nothing in this instance, I've been to serious collisions, can see my office from the scene and another cruiser that is parked there. Unfortunately, no one else working to drive it.

Just throwing the above out there for things to think of.

A charge I could think of is "drive on closed highway" or "disobey direction of an officer", but lots of variables for those, I wasn't there.

Cheers

HB

In reality the thing that was most upsetting or even terrifying was the tone the officer took. I totally 100% agree with what ‘Radar Identified said "his reaction was both unreasonable and entirely uncalled for".

I understand that the officer had a job to do, I respect that. I also understand that it is not an officers job to be your buddy, they need to keep up a reputation or else they will not be taken seriously, I can also respect that.

That being said this was an honest mistake, it is not like I disobeyed the direction of an officer (since there was not officer there to disobey). From a drivers point of view it looked like they only had the one side blocked, since they had all the cruisers blocking off that section of the road. They could of easily of used one of those 3 or 4 cruisers to block my side. Another thing as well if I had turned right instead of going straight I would have never even encountered an officer, and I would have been every bit as close to the scene of the collision.

All that being said I think the officer did not have to take that tone. He could have simply said that the "road is blocked off and I better not see you go up it again" and leave it there. Instead he went on a tangent about made up fines and screaming at me like I was in a military training movie. Now if he saw me do it a second time I could see that being an issue. We live in a retirement community, image if he took that tone to a grandma in her 80s. I think if he would have taken that tone to a young girl driver she would have started to cry, and I would not blame her.