smug smartarse mostly but you were being the big bad knowitall about BC law........trust me, I too have fought tickets (because, yes, i know it is a conviction for purposes of insurance and your rates could go up big time, so yes, I am willing to throw more $$$ at the ticket to save money on insurance..done ...in BC and in Ontario...but, if the facts are as they are, then OP is going ot loose and loose more going through the process only to possibly have his insurance go up anyway. BTW, officers love to go to court to deal with these things. i know, my brother loved it.

I'm going to need you to back this up with some kind of information. In all my years I have never heard of a moving violation being tagged back to the owner of a vehicle, only the driver. Nor in 5 minutes of google searching did I find any info that backs up your claim.

Well it depends on the road. Accidents are caused by loss of reaction time and distracted driving. If I am speeding past someone in the left lane and then some idiot decides to change lanes without using his signal, guess what I would be blamed as the speeder even though that idiot who didnt use his signal caused the accident. So when they do their accident stats, speed and only speed would be attributed to that accident. Speed is just one component. If the road is empty, the one thing against him is that if there is a pothole or the road is truly suitable for that low speed limit because it has some curves or is going through a town where passersby could be crossing the road or a rural area (like from Montreal to Burlington route), then you don't want to be going that fast. I personally think if speed limits were more realisitc of traffic and road conditions, then some of us would respect them more. I remember nearly hitting the curb on a turn when I was young because it had the same low speed limit as another road which would have been safe to drive three times the speed. I probably would have paid more attention to that speed limit if it was not so artificially low on other roads. (never had an at fault accident in my life, by the way, as I follow every other traffic rule like yields red lights, turn signals, dont text while driving, I drive slower while talking on the phone.)


In any case, I GOT A SPEEDING TICKET recently in QUEBEC. (Trois Rivers, one hour from Quebec City to be exact). And I am not making any excuses. I was speeding fast. I was in front of one wave of cars going 110kmh and I wanted to reach the second wave of cars which was probably going around 130 kmh and were way in front of me. So I sped up to catch that wave of cars. Stupidly, I broke my own rule of speeding. Do not speed near overpasses where you cannot see the cop hiding. He clocked me at 158. I didnt realize I was going that fast, but I have no reason to doubt the cop as I did go on a burst to catch up to the second wave of cars so i could "blend in" with the faster traffic wave. Problem is I blended in a quarter mile too late. The speed limit was 100 kmh. I was probably close to 100. Problem is it was MPH , not kmh. But no, I knew very well that 100 meant kmh. So I pull over thinking "man, I am in for it". THe French canadian cop looked serious, but not angry. He took my license , passport, rental car registration(rented in Boston). He came back and told me I was going 158. He then joked that I should be looking at the small dial and not the big dial on my odometer. I look at the fine and a huge relief. 370 Canadian dollars. That same speed in VA would get me 1000 and maybe a trip to who knows where. My only concern at this point is if these points get transferered to the US. He didn't know.

OK, if i have to pay the fine, i will gladly do that. But I am not above trying to beat the court. I had my french buddy call the number on the ticket so he can talk in French. They told him no way he has the authority to reduce the fine and that I would have to appear in court to ask for a reduction. Still, if anyone has any tips in trying to get the fine and infraction reduced, I will appreciate it. It says on the internet that Georgia does not reciprocate with Canada, but I can't be 100% sure. and would like to get that speed reduced even if it may not be shared officially with Georgia.

You got very lucky, or the cop was being kind - at 158 you missed the "excessive speed" measures that start at 160 (your license would have been immediately suspended for a week, double the fine, double the demerit points). Not sure in QC impound cars or not.

In Ontario, it's 150 as the cap before "stunt driving" law takes effect (immediate suspension, impounding of car, huge fine, possible licence withdrawl etc).

If what you state above were "completely true", then wouldn't that make the post to which you responded above actually "true" in parts? ;)


Some tickets are issued to owners on the basis of automated traffic cameras and/or automated school bus cameras -- and this happens even when the driver is not identifiable (or is misidentified) by way of the photo taken by the automated cameras.

How to resolve those situations of the moving violations tagged to the owner of the vehicle rather than tagged to the driver of the vehicle sort of varies from place to place. In quite a few jurisdictions the presumption is that the owner is the driver and it is up to the owner to do something to claim and/or demonstrate that they were not driving the vehicle at the time of the traffic camera's capture of the vehicle involved in the moving violation.

your poor attitude is showing, NO WHERE did I talk about knowing BC law, so in no way did I present myself like a know it all for BC law.

Again I'll state, OP did not know their options, I listed what I've done in the States and perhaps they should consider going that route in BC.Then why not just say that to the OP instead of attacking someone that is trying to help?

The cop was kind. I guess my luck evened out. I have gotten some bogus tickets in the US where the cop would flat out lie about my speed and round my speed to the next highest speed boundary (56 or 57 becomes a 60 on the ticket) . BUt in this case, either I was very lucky my foot didn't go down that extra few millimeters to go up to 160 or the cop took pity on my and just put 158. I know he wasn't a jerk. His lighthearted joke was because the 100mph lines up right next to the 158 kmh speed and the speed limit sign just says 100. He told me he would have let me off if I was caught at 120 or so. He was an elderly cop speaking in a friendly French Canadian accent. If you are driving from Boston to Quebec City, the only cops were in that town. There was another spot just 10 min further down where there were two other cops. Didn't see a single cop the rest of the journey .

So it loooks like I should just pay the fine since I avoided obvious much worse punishment. I will just make sure to see if I can pay the fine and have the infraction so that it won't transfer to Georgia.

I got ticketed in Vancouver during Olympics for open beer bottle. Cop writes me ticket for 240 bucks and then tells me "Don't worry, you don't have to pay it. This is local and only for statistics".
Still a bit worried about going snowboarding in Whistler this winter.