This AM I submitted a drivers complaint to the local RCMP with a statement and diagrams showing where the incident took place. Well, they called me back telling me they had contacted the driver re the complaint and decided to give her a warning as she did have a clean driving record, and the constable said she apologized.
My thought was she had a clean driving record, probably because she has not been caught.
Without going into detail I can say she deserved to be charged, one day she will cause an accident if her driving habits don't change.
The constable said to me this is not your first complaint making it sound like I do this daily. I have made three complaints in the last year and they make it sound as though I do it to often. My remark to him was if I had the time I could write up many complaints about people breaking the traffic laws every time I left home.
What I see is this province does not have enough RCMP on traffic, and as you well know we need it.
I am willing to go to court and I know it takes up time in the courts and could also take months before it goes to court, but the other alternative is to turn a blind eye and say nothing. This will be the last time I waste my time making out a detailed statement only to have some young constable tell me more or less I am wasting my time.
I find myself in a bit of a dilemma with regard to this too. I was coming home from work this evening and a driver in a Kia was obviously concerned about me driving the posted speed limit. So that I could see he disapproved, he followed along behind me quite closely. I'm sure that he was unhappy that he couldn't pass on the broken lines due to oncoming traffic. However, he did take the opportunity when we reached a stretch of double solid line. There was oncoming traffic at the time but he hit the gas and got out of the way quickly.
I did get the plate as he went by, 904CMB, and the time, 16:54 hours. My reaction was the same as yours was, that I should make a driving complaint.
The trouble is, I reported an incident almost identical to this one a couple of years ago and was totally unimpressed about the way the local detachment handled it. Having inside knowledge, I know the constable tried to brush me off initially and then did a shoddy job of bringing the case to a conclusion. The conclusion was failing to notify me of the court date for the ticket dispute and not even bothering to show up herself. The ticket was dismissed and the work done to ticket the offending driver was wasted.
I ignored a worse example of the same behaviour on the same road a few months ago having thought about the bad experience.
In defense of the officers that do conscientiously follow up complaints like these, I know that there are instances when despite the complainant thinking that they had a strong case, once I finished my investigation I held the opinion based on my experience that the matter would not result in a conviction if it were tried in traffic court. I too had to tell the complainant that I would not ticket the offending driver.
Is it worth your while to have the response to your complaint reviewed? Maybe. If the constable was part of a traffic unit, you might have some success speaking with their supervisor. If not, you are probably wasting your time.
As for myself, I'm going to contact the head of traffic services for my area and make this complaint directly to him. We'll see if there is a different outcome....
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Sad to Say, but I Agree