Had another fun encounter with our resident "protectors" last night.
My wife and I were coming home from the gym in the rain last night and were coming down 97St towards the intersection with 111Av. There was a truck in front of me and a little honda civic with a F&F license plate in the left lane beside me. We had the green light to go through the intersection so we all went through. The view of 111Av at that intersection is blocked by a building, a sign, and a big ass pole and when we got into the intersection we saw that there was a fire truck with its lights on stopped short of the intersection 111Av and when we all hit the intersection he turned on his siren like he wanted to go through.
Anyway, now for the fun part. On the other side of the intersection (going the opposite way to us on 97St) was a cruiser and as soon as we all passed through the intersection buddy hit the lights and came after us. All three vehicles pulled over in line, and waited for the cops to come out. I was last in line and the cops just sat there for quite a while until first the truck left, and then the civic left too. Finally an older officer came up and asked for my ID and stuff, and after he went back to the cruiser the rookie came up and rapped on my passenger window. I rolled it down and junior demanded my wife's license too, she asked why and he wouldn't respond. When she gave it to him he was shocked and asked if it was her real birthdate on the license (we're both around 30, but look younger
).
Well junior took my wife's license back to the cruiser too, and after about 15 minutes he came back with my stuff and gave me a ticket for failure to yield, telling me that because I was behind the other vehicles I should have been able to see the approaching fire truck and stop in time. I asked him if he was serious because he didn't ticket the other vehicles and he said the other vehicles were innocent because they didn't have a chance to stop.
Now I get to go to court, show photos of the site, show the required decision distances required for the road, show the actual decision distance for this situation, give the required stopping distances, and basically prove that it was impossible for any of us to safely yield to the fire truck. I get to cite that passing through the intersection is the appropriate thing to do in that situation according to the Highways Act and that both my actions and the actions of the fire truck driver were the right things to do. So basically I get to show a judge that junior did not understand the situation and how the law applies to it.
The lesson here, rookies are now on the road and are ticketing everything and chances are they're going to be wrong in their judgements of what is ticketable so watch out.
My wife and I were coming home from the gym in the rain last night and were coming down 97St towards the intersection with 111Av. There was a truck in front of me and a little honda civic with a F&F license plate in the left lane beside me. We had the green light to go through the intersection so we all went through. The view of 111Av at that intersection is blocked by a building, a sign, and a big ass pole and when we got into the intersection we saw that there was a fire truck with its lights on stopped short of the intersection 111Av and when we all hit the intersection he turned on his siren like he wanted to go through.
Anyway, now for the fun part. On the other side of the intersection (going the opposite way to us on 97St) was a cruiser and as soon as we all passed through the intersection buddy hit the lights and came after us. All three vehicles pulled over in line, and waited for the cops to come out. I was last in line and the cops just sat there for quite a while until first the truck left, and then the civic left too. Finally an older officer came up and asked for my ID and stuff, and after he went back to the cruiser the rookie came up and rapped on my passenger window. I rolled it down and junior demanded my wife's license too, she asked why and he wouldn't respond. When she gave it to him he was shocked and asked if it was her real birthdate on the license (we're both around 30, but look younger
).Well junior took my wife's license back to the cruiser too, and after about 15 minutes he came back with my stuff and gave me a ticket for failure to yield, telling me that because I was behind the other vehicles I should have been able to see the approaching fire truck and stop in time. I asked him if he was serious because he didn't ticket the other vehicles and he said the other vehicles were innocent because they didn't have a chance to stop.
Now I get to go to court, show photos of the site, show the required decision distances required for the road, show the actual decision distance for this situation, give the required stopping distances, and basically prove that it was impossible for any of us to safely yield to the fire truck. I get to cite that passing through the intersection is the appropriate thing to do in that situation according to the Highways Act and that both my actions and the actions of the fire truck driver were the right things to do. So basically I get to show a judge that junior did not understand the situation and how the law applies to it.
The lesson here, rookies are now on the road and are ticketing everything and chances are they're going to be wrong in their judgements of what is ticketable so watch out.
