OHTA.ca

Just some background:

I make on average over 150k/year, as an engineer traveling from company to company troubleshooting robotic equipment. I work on average 70-80hours/week. My life is incredibly busy, and which in turn allows me to be careless with some minor things.

I got a speeding ticket, which led to a suspension for going over in points. I had changed my address, but never updated my license, so I never got the letter.

Was pulled over 8 months later, and given a DUS. So for 8 months I drove with a suspended license without my knowledge.

Went to court, they reduced it to a Driving without license and got my license reinstated in 3 days (something that could have been done easily the day i got the letter).

I changed my address again (moved into a better neighbourhood), forgot to pay another minor speeding ticket, and had my license suspended again. This time I got in a minor fender bender, and the officer informed me 'the accident is being charged to the other party completely, but your license is suspended for unpaid fines'. Wrote me another DUS ticket, and now my lawyer is fighting that, but the prosecutor is saying since you already had a past DUS dropped to a Driving without license, they won't do anything for this one.

Is there anything I can do? I will honestly lose my job/clients if I lose my license for 6 months. It's too big a risk. I drive waaay too much, and hiring a full time driver working the random hours I need would cost me 30-40k for 6 months alone.

I've worked way too hard for my career to be tossing it all away due to some unnoticed bill. I don't mind paying extra, or doing community service, but losing my license for 6 months is too much for me.

I believe they will make an example with you, you got off once but clearly did not learn the lesson so they need to make it more harsh for you to get it. Your only hope is that your lawyer will find a fault in the charge (difficult as its a straight forward charge)

Updating the address on your license isn't just a good idea, it's mandatory. You are required to update your address within 6 days of the change.

If they are unwilling to offer you a plea deal (and rightfully so), you can either plead guilty or continue with a trial. That's pretty much it. It's a pretty straight forward case. You were either suspended or you weren't. There's not much to prove.

On a side note, driving with a suspended license is a breach of your insurance policy conditions. If you've made claims or have issues later on (lawsuits) during the time you were driving suspended, it may become an issue.

I highly doubt they'll give you ANY break. After all, you clearly don't like to follow the rules of the road (having had so many demerits that you got suspended), then totally disregard any suspensions imposed on you. Then, you make little to no effort to make things better for yourself by following through on paying your amounts owed. As an educated professional, you should and can do better. This certainly is not the type of publicity any professional would want to draw upon themselves. It reflects poorly on your judgement capabilities. In fact, some professional associations actually consider such actions in assessing 'conduct unbecoming'. If you are a P.Eng., you might want to avoid them finding out about your lead foot.

So, as applies to everyone else, this may turn out to be a very expensive lesson. Unless your lawyer can 'engineer' something to fix this, you might just wish to start looking in to ride share programs already, so that you are not faced with a sudden work emergency and have no way to get to the site.