Ontario Highway Traffic Act

It sounds more likely that the truck lost a tire then some of its load. Many commercial trucks use retreaded tires, where a new tread is wrapped around an older worn tire. There are lots of environmental and economic benefits to this, but the new treads are somewhat more prone to breaking apart. Hitting tire debris at highway speeds is pretty nasty ...

The fact that you committed the offence doesn't mean you'll necessarily be charged. For the charge to be laid, the bus driver would have to obtain and record your licence plate and vehicle description. If the matter is reported, it will likely be a few days before the ticket is mailed.

Also, in some of his notes, he states/admits "loss of sight briefly". Would I then have a valid argument, that he could be mistaking my vehicle with another that looks like mine? There are still many cars like mine on the road......

It would depend on the level of traffic, location and total time/distance the officer lost sight of your vehicle ...

Reductions are quite common. Most jurisdictions offer a first attendance meeting with the Crown, where they will hopefully let you plead guilty to a reduced speeding fine. You will still need to select option 3 to dispute the charge and then determine if/how first attendance meetings are scheduled in Orillia.

The only way to delay a conviction is to contest the charge. You would have to request a trial and hope that there's enough of a backlog that your Court date isn't booked before February. In some busy jurisdictions like Toronto, a nine month wait for a trial is pretty common, but I have no idea what kind of time frame you're looking at in Niagara.

If you're hesitant to seek legal representation, try meeting with the Crown first to see if they'll offer you any kind of deal. You're looking at some very serious fines, but if you can show the Courts you've taken care of everything hopefully they may offer some leniency. Hopefully the Crown would agree to a plea deal where they'll drop one charge ...

Are you sure you were charged under the Highway Traffic Act? Some municipalities have bylaws that mirror the highway traffic act, with offences like speeding, disobeying lights and insecure loads. It's typically bylaw officers that enforce them, but they will do things like run radar at the City dump and charge people with various offences similar ...

The general advice on these forums with a careless charge is to seek legal representation. While it is a difficult charge to prove, the consequences (particularly in terms of insurance) are quite serious on conviction. In your case I'd say you're certainly at fault in the collision, and there's a reasonable prospect of conviction if you provided ...

I'm nickel and dime-ing here, but if you were to go by what my GPS said, I was not even travelling below 120km/hr..
I think you might mean above , or else that is some evidence you don't want to bring up in Court. :)

I appreciate that nobody likes a left lane bandit, but passing a marked police cruiser at 20 over probably wasn't the best idea ...

Request disclosure to see what the officer's actual observations are. If he was as far away as you believe, there may be a good case to argue reasonable doubt since it would be difficult to clearly observe the offence at night from any great distance.

Technically you could still be charged by summons with speeding up to 6 months from the date of ...

Sitting on the floor between two seats isn't a seating position, so the regulation doesn't apply.

If your friend can't afford the fine, then he needs to go to Court. He can either plead guilty with an explanation and request a reduced fine from the JP, or attempt to work out a plea deal with the Crown for a reduced fine. He could also ask to pay ...

Decatur wrote:Shirt colour and number of passengers? Very thin. They also have to real bearing on the original offence.

Agreed. The Crown/JP will shut down pointless questions pretty quick. Shirt color may be relevant in a seatbelt offence (i.e. belt same color as shirt defence), but has no relevance to speeding. Stick to the facts in issue.

If you're vehicle is truly insured, then you will simply need to show proof of this at Court for the charge to be dismissed. That's a good thing since driving with no insurance carries huge fines. As for the second and third charge, after living in Ontario for so long you're supposed to have an Ontario licence (and not use your US one) and also ...

It's an absolute liability offence, so your speed/distance are irrelevant to the Courts. Once it's red, it's red. Unless the ticket has some fatal error, usually your best option is to try and plead out to a reduced fine.

Canadian Legal Information Institute is a good source: http://www.canlii.org/en/
2. (1) Subject to section 3, the headlamps on a motor vehicle shall be capable of projecting at least two beams, so controlled that only one beam can be selected for use by the driver of the motor vehicle at any one time according to the requirements of traffic. R.R ...