123km/h In A 70km/h

Just got this last night on my way to guelph.

Crested a hill, officer coming at me, pulled a u turn and pulled me over.

I will go back and look again but I thought I was in an 80 not a 70 and I am positive I wasn't doing more than 120. My speedo read 110-115. I have aftermarket tires and rims so I assume this would be the difference.

It was around 7pm, already dark, nobody on the road but myself, very very windy and cold. Got a summon for excessive speeding and another for racing. This is my first speeding offence in my 5 years of driving.

Officer said very little, re-enforced the fact it was halloween and there could of been a little kid crossing the highway where there wasn't any houses within a km or so and i could of hit them, then spent the majority of the time in his car filling out paper work, comes back out and tells me to call for a ride. Car gets towed and here I am.

Never been to court or have had anything to do with the police.

Insight please?

On the summons for racing, does it indicate if you were charged with stunt driving - more than 50 km/h over the limit or stunt driving - marked departure from the lawful rate of speed? Not much I can really tell you, other than the officer chose to use s. 172 (stunt driving, racing) of the Highway Traffic Act instead of just s. 128 (speeding), and also did not want to knock down the speed to 49 over. Do you think the officer lost sight of you for a while (more than a couple of seconds) before he pulled you over? If he did lose sight of you for an extended period before catching up... well... remember the 17-year-old who was caught doing 239 in an 80 zone last year? He beat the charge, pretty much for that exact reason.

Take notes of the incident, and go back and take some photographs with a cheap $6 disposable camera showing that there are no houses, hence no risk of hitting a kid that may be Trick or Treating on a deserted rural highway. The reason for the disposable camera is that digital photographs can be easily altered, so some courts will not accept them. Toronto usually will accept digitals if the original data card is submitted and the photographer is present, but it doesn't sound like you were nabbed in Toronto.

For any serious HTA charge, I always recommend some sort of professional legal help, which, in this case, would be a paralegal. The more info you have for the paralegal, the better. There's also a form to fill out at the bottom of this page that you can use to get a quote. The consequences of being convicted are quite severe (large fine, additional suspension, huge insurance increase) for this charge, so the risk of "going it alone" is very high if you have little or no experience in court. A professional should be able to, at the very least, get it down to just regular speeding and get rid of the stunt driving part of it.

smurf wrote:

I have aftermarket tires and rims so I assume this would be the difference.

Don't bother bringing this fact up in court.

If you can't afford to hire a paralegal (which I would really recommend doing if you can), you'll want to start by filing for disclosure which will let you see the evidence against you that will be relied upon in court. If you go to http://www.ticketcombat.com it outlines the whole procedure and generally how you should proceed if fighting it yourself.

yes the officer did lose sight of me when he turned around to make a u-turn since i was going over a hill and was over it before he got turned around and caught up to me, at which point i was going 80.

he gave me 2 summons, one for speeding and one for racing it said.

i have been over the ticketcombat website as well as the 50over website too. i'll consider a paralegal, my dad is an x-cop but that was in the 80's. so i was looking for more info on this.

thanks for all the insight so far.

So went to court today for this, spoke to the crown first I believe.

He agreed to remove the racing charge, and amend the speeding to a 49 over for 4 points but then he doubled the set fine instead.

I took it, but I was wondering since I was not convicted of racing then what about my license suspension and car impound fee's, can I get that back or something?

Unfortunately, for the impound fees, no. Hence the outcry about this whole law, besides the fact that it is unconstitutional.

Suspension has "never happened" as a result of lower charge. When you are filling out an insurance app, you can state that your license has never been suspended.

racer wrote:Suspension has "never happened" as a result of lower charge. When you are filling out an insurance app, you can state that your license has never been suspended.

Suspension has happened, if the person so chooses to plea to something else or even beat the offence so be it.

Might want to error on the side of caution and go to the MTO and have your driving history with suspensions and convictions printed out....before filling out any insurance info.

He agreed to remove the racing charge, and amend the speeding to a 49 over for 4 points but then he doubled the set fine instead.

JP did not have jurisdiction to impose fine more than $343 plus surcharge for this speeding offence. There is no jurisdiction to change speeding ticket penalties. Speeding penalties are set by legislation for that reason.