Odd Failure to Remain

Couple a weeks ago I lost control of my car and hit a tree. No property was damage but my own. This was my first ever car accident. I was scared and panicked because I had no idea if had any injuries so I immediately pulled into the nearest parking lot at a local school which was approximately 600m away or about a minute away. I stopped to asses both the damage to my body (which was minor) and the damage to my car. In about 5 minutes the Police came, they immediately put the cuffs on me and proceeded to arrest me for failing to remain.

Here's the kicker. The Police Officer who arrested me claimed that an off duty police officer saw me driving down one of the major streets in my city, THIS IS NOT TRUE. They are insisting I was. I denied this adamantly but they did not believe me. I got a court case coming up soon to fight this. I do not have money to afford a lawyer and since they are not looking for jail time I do not qualify for legal aid. So I am doing my research by myself and I hope your input can help me out but have a pretrail meeting with the crown coming up soon.

Thank you.

Ok. Lets put it this way. it is no fun to go to a court until you start talking to them like people. though they are figures of authority, but it does not let them to to step all over you just because they think they can do that.

I will help you because, i believe your own damage to your car is your own responsibility and you are entitled to fix it on your own. without government and insurance company intervention. i think it is totally unfair. i just hope you will never do that again, for whatever reason it happened. just be careful. you can win the case this big every once in a while, don't make it a habbit to get more tickets. if you were drunk, thats not good.

if you have pretrial that means you probably have summons. first rescedule your pretrial date. at least try. i honestly do not know if it is possible since you come there only to state the your plea, but it is always good to postpone a date so you have more time to do research on the way the law works. mind that i had many cases when prosecution office """loses""" the motion for adjournement and you get convicted. then you have to go to appeal and so on. so. always make sure you have the forms filed properly and keep a copy or two, stamped by jurisdictions. it is also possible they will eneter a not guily plea for you themselves and scedule a court date for you, that happened to me in the past by some weird reason.

so first rescedule, then appear to resceduled date of pretrial and enter a plea / or tell them you need time to find a lawyer and rescedule the court date again. you will be allowed to do that. it is fair becuase you want to get proper representation.

then appear for the pretrial without a lawyer, and enter a plea. or at least try to ask for more time to get a lawyer since it is honestly hard to find a good lawyer these days to represent you. if not allowed enter a plea.

remember you have to dress good and be persistent. very important.

once you obtained a court date, rescedule it with a motion and come back to this thread i will tell you more. everything can happen and deviate from the course.

how old are you, if you don't mind me asking. it does sometimes reflect the outcome of the procedures in the court, though the courts have to be fair to everyone. and where in ontario is this happening.

don't feel like you have done something wrong, because i believe you didn't, and probably many others will also back you up on this from the personal point of view. many of us scratched the corners with our cars, its none of the governments business to get involved into our private matter.

i am not a lawyer, i just share the experience that i had, and want to hear your outcome. it is important for me to hear your feedback.

good luck.

Id strongly disagree with the above post. The charge your facing is very serious, and employing deceitful delay tactics is not recommended. There is certainly nothing wrong with asking for more time to prepare, but dont claim youre trying to find legal representation when youre not.

First step is to request disclosure and see what the evidence against you is. Which street they think you were driving along isnt really relevant (unless you can show its incorrect to help raise reasonable doubt) just the fact that you failed to remain at the scene of the accident. You'll have to see if the Crown has enough evidence to prove the charge and then decide if you can actually justify your actions.

You will also want to speak with the Crown and see if theyre willing to offer any type of plea deal to a less serious charge. Good luck.

No drinking was involved. It was honesty the result of wet road, nothing more. I feel bad about this situation because it makes even the most innocent people appear to be guilty because of being nervous.

I have a few things going against me even though they shouldn't. I am 23 year old male with a sports car. I know there is a stigma that all young males with nice cars have watched too many Fast and Furious movies and drive recklessly so I don't expect the benefit of the doubt but I am not a stereotype. I am just a young adult who was involved in a car accident and pulled into the closest parking lot.

The false accusation I believe I have beat. With accordance with the Police report my accident happened at 2:38 (Eye witness confirms this fact), with the Police officer arriving at the scene at 2:45 but the route the this mysterious off duty police officer states he saw me take would have required me to drive 8KM. With Google maps support I was able to graph that it would be impossible for me to take that route and return to the location they found me within the allowed 8 minutes. Google Maps states that a car in IDEAL condition would would take at least 16 minutes to complete this route. I would not have been at the location the police arrived until 2:55, let alone a car with a flat tire and bumper impairing my driving accuracy and speed.

Is driving 1 minute/800m away fleeing in your opinions? If I really had the intent to flee wouldn't I try to get as far away as possible?

perano wrote:

Is driving 1 minute/800m away fleeing in your opinions?

By the letter of the law it is. You have to remain at the scene of the collision. 800 metres away is, by definition, leaving the scene... depending on the circumstances. You can move the vehicle out of the way (shoulder, whatever), but 800 metres is a lot. The only time you can leave is to get help, and then you must immediately return to the scene (unless you need to be carted away in an ambulance); or if you got into a collision with a road-raging sociopath who was going to assault you. You could also drive a certain distance, if remaining in the exact spot where the collision occurred would be unsafe. However, you must contact police immediately.

You may be able to plea-bargain to "fail to report collision," which is nowhere near as serious as "fail to remain." However, make the disclosure request and see what evidence they have against you, if you have not already. If there are significant inconsistencies with the statement of this off-duty police officer, then you may be able to get the charge dropped. The Google Maps research is a good start, but make sure that you have all of the evidence so you can figure out exactly how to defend yourself in court (if it goes that far).

It is true that the charge is serious, i think it is 7 points? i am not sure. but nobody is dying.

I am not there to make deals with prosecution, as for me i go all the way and appeal the courts decision. look i am talking about technicalities of the court, i am not talking about the case itself. i started to hate the prosecution from the moment they started to lie in front of my face. and losing the forms that i filed. this is done on purpose, this is not an accident.

So, delaying the courts is not that critically bad, i did and was just fine. For the reasons that i was worried, and simply did not know what to do, i wanted to research more information and get used to the feeling that i am being tried.

Saying all this, it is definately your decision on how to go about the trials perano, but you have to show sincerety in the court and show that you have nothing to hide and truly know that you are innocent. as far as delaying do it once, or twice. it is reasonable to do since we have busy lives, and when prosecution throws an argument at the judge that you are delaying this matter!!! just reply that there are circumstances in your life where you just cannot be present on the dates when the court arranges it, tell them you are making every possible effort to deal with the situation, and you are researching your defence. afterall you are telling the truth. always speak to a judge not prosecution, this is a golden rule.

take and read the brochures that the courts give out. it directly states if you are not sure what plea you want to enter and want to get legal adivce you can do so! you can do that before the judge! ask for adjournment and be present i think this is very nice of them. these brochures actually just came out recently, and i believe there was an incident in the courts where they had to change some rules the way they prosecute citizens.

I am just speaking from my past experience on the matter. I had the same charge to me and the detective was after me for a while until i met him and he gave me the summons. I proved to the detective after almost two years of trials, that the other party involved in the incident (not accident), was lying on their damages. And yes i said i proved to the detective, so to save his embarassment in front of the court he did not call out the witness. It just worked out this way.

but true, perano, the statements in the disclosure could be based only on the assumption of the police officers and information you told them. no undercover cop exist that come out from the past, i had that used against me too, i just smiled at the officer and said nothing. won the case after.

so you have a chance to win this case on technicality and false testimony of the police officer. these are your arguements. it is true you had an accident, there is no denying it now. you probably confessed it to the officers too.

before i will say anything else do you have summons to court?

Radar Identified wrote:

You may be able to plea-bargain to "fail to report collision," which is nowhere near as serious as "fail to remain." However, make the disclosure request and see what evidence they have against you, if you have not already.

I'd also suggest "Fail to Report Damage to property on Highway", section 201 of the HTA as a possibility.

Every person who, as a result of an accident or otherwise, operates or drives a vehicle or leads, rides or drives an animal upon a highway and thereby damages any shrub, tree, pole, light, sign, sod or other property on the highway or a fence bordering the highway shall forthwith report the damage to a police officer.

Might still have some serious insurance implications upon conviction, but the charge itself carries no demerit points and just the standard $110 total fine.

they get ya every way.