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Speeding in school zone
An officer ran out from some bushes, paused, then ran back. I was waved aside by another officer who did not have a radar gun, but told me I was speeding. He went back behind my car and came back with a gun showing 55. I do not believe I was going this fast. He wrote me an error filled ticket. Errors include: no street address, just the name of a long road that has more than one school zone on it, didn't specify that there are two vehicle owners but put a scribble in the box, year is put as 2010, then changed to read 201d. Can I dispute? And do both officers have to appear in court for questioning?
You can always dispute a ticket, the bigger question is can you win.
It sounds as if all the errors you speak of are in the gray shaded areas of the ticket. Unless you can show that there are so many that there must be errors in the other areas of the ticket too, this probably won't cause the ticket to be dismissed.
The specific street address is never written on the ticket, just the name of the street. The particular location along the street is given in the officer's evidence.
If one officer operated the speed measuring device and one wrote the ticket then both need to show up for trial.
You say that you don't think that you were going that fast. This will not be a defence in court. You will need to convince the justice that you were traveling at or less than 30 km/h while you drove through the zone. If you cannot do that, chances are that you will not win the dispute.
Looking at my ticket, the shaded area contains my name and address and personal information. All the errors I notice are out of this area. The office where I went to dispute my ticket said that the only things that could be disputed are in the "shaded area", and I am confused as to which areas these are. Can you be clearer about the "shaded area" and it's importance?
I have an AH series Violation Ticket in front of me, and the shaded areas include: the driver's license province, number and expiry, whether the driver is male or female, all fields related to the driver's address and whether there should be a change of address or not. Nearer the bottom of the form the province of the vehicle licence plate, the plate number, National Safety Code power unit jurisdiction and number, the name of the registered owner and all fields related to the description of the vehicle being driven, the dispute address, the provincial court location, the date of service, the officer's number and the organization that the officer belongs to.
Mistakes and omissions in these fields are not fatal to the ticket.
All other areas with the white background are important and must be completed correctly.
Some errors will be immediately fatal, causing the ticket to be cancelled by ICBC's ticket unit. For the most part, these will be omissions or something obvious like an offence date in 2012 for example. We haven't gotten there yet. Also, failing to tick the correct box, the wrong wording for an offence or an incorrect section number or penalty amount could cause cancellation.
The balance of errors, such as wrong street name, wrong offence, wrong place or something along those lines is not obvious to a person in the Ticket Unit and will pass. You will have to identify them at trial.
This does not mean an immediate win either. The Offence Act allows an officer to amend the ticket. This may be done prior to trial or after their evidence in chief. It is up to the justice whether it is accepted or not. In my experience, they usually refuse, but the law does allow it. The officer can also serve a corrected ticket to you prior to the start of the trial.
Thank you very much for your wise and educational response. I have one more question. In the unshaded area you described, there is a line like this: "AT OR NEAR ____(PLACE/CITY/TOWN)_____ and it is not filled in. The street is written in above it, but not the address but you already said that is ok. Is the place an important error? Also, The box under "ACT" is filled illegibly. This guy was really really careless. I'd say they were trying to ticket as fast and as furious as possible! I am debating whether I should pursue this and can see both sides of the coin.
That is one of those immediately fatal flaws in a ticket. The ICBC ticket unit will return it to the officer with a big red CANCELLED stamp across the front of it along with the advice that they may wish to issue a corrected ticket to the driver.
To be honest, I don't know what the best advice to you here is, wait and see what happens or enter a dispute to the allegation. If you wait and somehow the ticket goes through, you will be deemed to have not disputed it after 30 days have passed. You will also lose the opportunity for the early payment discount. My guess is that entering the dispute to the allegation is best. If it is cancelled, there is nothing to dispute, If not, your dispute is entered.
Unless you are successful on the ticket defects, you will have difficulty with the speeding allegation. Speeding, particularly with a pace or laser is really hard to successfully dispute.
Thank you again for your amazingly clear and thoughtful response. I think that the officers were on some kind of ticket handing out race and were getting very careless but in spite of that I have been more conscientious about speed limits and have full respect for the law. I can only hope that this time it is on my side!