A little media coverage seems to have done the trick for a Burnaby man fighting a traffic ticket he got while volunteering at the Hats Off Day parade earlier this month.
A week after attending the popular North Burnaby street festival to take photos and videos for the local firefighters union, Silvester Law got a $142 ticket in the mail.
A red light camera had caught him driving about 30 km/h through a red light on Hastings Street by Willingdon Avenue at 9:02 a.m. But the intersection had already been closed for about half an hour for the event.
Law said police officers had waved him and a few other drivers through closed intersections to go from one side of the parade route to the other.
“Everywhere there’s barricades,” he said.
The red light camera at Hastings and Willingdon, however, had apparently continued to snap photos.
Law first called the intersection camera safety unit as per the back of his ticket, but the officer on the phone “didn’t give him the time of day,” he said, even though a photo attached to his ticket clearly shows police officers standing in the intersection, not paying much attention to Law’s vehicle slowly running the red.
“I tried to explain to them that you can even see that cops were standing in the middle of the intersection already,” Law said.
When he attended the ICBC office in Metrotown, he said he was told he could dispute the ticket in court, but he would get two demerit points on his licence as well as a $169 fine if he was unsuccessful.
“It’s frustrating because there’s no process to easily address the mistake,” he said. “It’s kind of mind blowing, the massive bureaucracy that now I have to face.”
After his dilemma was covered in a CTV news story, Vancouver law firm Warnett Hallen even agreed to help him out for free.
“This ticket should not have been issued; that’s the bottom line,” partner Manjot Hallen told the NOW.
The whole experience has been a learning curve for 34-year-old Law, who said he hasn’t gotten so much as a speeding ticket since he was 18.
“I’m grateful for the support I’m getting right now,” he said.
'Sloppiness in knowing the law'
Traffic tickets can only be disputed in court, according to an emailed statement from ICBC communications specialist Joanna Linsangan, and ICBC doesn’t have any say in the enforcement of provincial traffic laws.
As for Law being told he’d get a bigger fine and two demerit points if he unsuccessfully disputed the ticket, Linsangan said the fine for running a red light at an intersection is $167 – $142 if paid within 30 days – but demerit points aren’t applied at all in camera-enforcement cases.
Burnaby traffic ticket lawyer Dan Griffith with ATAC Law said it’s all too common for ICBC employees to give out wrong information, but it’s hard to say whether they are doing it purposely to discourage drivers from disputing tickets.
“Some of them might be malicious, but I would say that it’s more likely just sloppiness in knowing the law,” he said.
Thankfully that may all be moot for Law in this case, however, as Tuesday afternoon the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General told the NOW the intersection camera safety unit has decided to throw out the ticket after all.
“The ISC program had been in the process of reviewing this request, and now that the program is fully aware of the circumstances surrounding this event, it will be taking steps to cancel this ticket,” said an emailed statement.
