My daughter was just informed that her license is suspended for 30 days because she was convicted of failure to ensure a passenger was wearing their seat belt in a car she was driving. I understand the need for the law but I feel the penalty for a 17 year old driver is too great. My daughter volunteered to be a designated driver for a group of her friends that were partying, some of whom were drinking. Before driving she asked everyone if they were wearing their seat belts and everyone confirmed to her verbally that they were. They were pulled over in a spot check and one of the passengers in the rear wasn't wearing their seat belt. The end result of this is that my daughter will never volunteer to be a designated driver again and who knows what would happen to a group of teenage drinkers who might make that wrong decision and have one of their drinking buddies drive. This is totally counterproductive to what we are trying to accomplish by having our teens be responsible and not drink and drive. I can understand the need to protect the passengers of the car but I would argue that any adult would have handled the situation the same way and would not have physically gotten out of the drivers seat to check to see if a passenger in their car actually had put their seat belt on. Does anyone know if we can appeal this conviction as we ignorantly paid the ticket not realizing that her license would be suspended? If yes how do I find out how to go about that process?

Somebody PLEASE help these people out! Just when HwyBear has me convinced cops are good, decent folks AFTERall, I read a story like this and get all bent out of shape again >[

I'm SURE a JP would have ruled in your favour. She did what is reasonable. She asked, and was told all were buckled up.

My daughter is just getting her beginners and starting drivers ed nxt week. I'm scared to death for her in this rediculous era of seek and destroy mentality. She is a rare jem who doesn't drink or smoke pot (unlike most teens). Of course, she will be the DD many, many times. If she gets a ticket like this, I'm going to go balistic on someone!!

Hold on a sec. No seatbelt (passenger) carries 2 demerit points and a warning letter from MTO for G1/G2 drivers. Why was her license suspended? Did you read the letter wrong or does she have other convictions?

ticketcombat wrote:

Hold on a sec. No seatbelt (passenger) carries 2 demerit points and a warning letter from MTO for G1/G2 drivers. Why was her license suspended? Did you read the letter wrong or does she have other convictions?

Has to be other convictions....G1/G2 are allowed to "collect" 6 points!!

bookm...I would have also charged each passenger for "consuming under age" and possibly contacted CAS pending the situation.

This is interesting...I thought the passenger gets the ticket and not the driver?

Passengers 16 and older get tickets, children don't.

hwybear wrote:

bookm...I would have also charged each passenger for "consuming under age" and possibly contacted CAS pending the situation.

Ya know, maybe it's the immature underage drinkers that SHOULD have been charged, and an appreciative nod given to the responsible SOBER driver! Definitely not what happened here.

A few years ago, our oldest (now moved to Toronto) got carried to our front door by a couple responsible sober friends... Rang the doorbell and asked it there's anything else they could do. We wanted to figure out a way to trade our mess-of-a-kid in for one of THESE guys, LOL, but you get what you get. If I had heard that the driver got a ticket because dumbass in the back seat wasn't properly buckled up, I would have felt awful. Maybe next time they'd leave him passed out in a field or something.

Morality debate aside, can the OP re-open his daughters case?

hwybear wrote:

I would have also charged each passenger for "consuming under age" and possibly contacted CAS pending the situation.

I was just thinking the same thing!

These kids are lucky they got off with what they got! Which was Nothing!

I Highly disagree with Underage Drinking. The cop was nice enough to not question the passengers about the drinking, and just issued the Driver a ticket.

Thanks TC...been too long a day.....

16yrs and older.....ticket goes to that passenger......

now why is someone 15 and under consuming? That is for sure a CAS call.

Bookm wrote:

... can the OP re-open his daughters case?