It is not uncommon for police officers to issue traffic tickets to people months, or even up to a year, after a driving incident occurs.
Many people believe that a traffic ticket can only be issued by the police at the time that the officer observes the incident takes place. But this is not true.
Pursuant to the BC Motor Vehicle Act, police officers have one year from the date that an offence took place to lay a charge. For this reason, if you commit a traffic violation the police have a year from when the violation took place to investigate and determine whether or not they are going to give you a ticket, and then issue a ticket.
Once you receive the ticket, you have 30 days to dispute it.
Just because police have a year to issue a ticket does not mean you should worry that because you have been in a motor vehicle accident or involved in some type of driving incident, police are gathering evidence and issuing tickets against you. While police can do this, it is typically only done in specific scenarios. These include cases where the accident may have resulted in injuries and police need to investigate the injuries and the cause of the collision.
If the police have seized your vehicle, or collected breath or blood samples from you, even though you were sober, you can expect that you may potentially face a ticket down the road.
In those circumstances, it is important to get legal advice, because a lawyer can often insert themselves between you and the police officer for the purposes of preventing you from being charged criminally.
If the police determine that no criminal offence has been committed, they may then decide to issue you a ticket. But with the help of a lawyer, the police may be talked out of doing that.
Police cannot issue you a ticket more than a year after an incident took place. This means that if the incident happened more than 12 months ago, you can relax knowing you will not receive a traffic ticket for it.
They also do not have to issue you a ticket in person. Police can, in some circumstances, send a violation ticket by mail, or alternatively, they can submit a police file to Crown counsel who can then relay information essentially charging you with the traffic ticket offence. This would then be dealt with, not in traffic court, but through a normal criminal court process.
Even though it is not a criminal offence, it is dealt with in criminal court because it is prosecuted by way of information as opposed to by way of a trap violation ticket. In those circumstances, a police officer may serve you with a document, known as a summons, or you may receive the summons document in the mail.
If you receive something related to the Motor Vehicle Act, after an incident took place, it is always important to seek legal advice. This is because there are two factors that are important to get legal information and advice about; whether or not the evidence gathered actually supports the charge, and whether or not the police are going to be able to prove the charge.
In addition, legal advice can help you determine if it was laid out of time, and thus something you cannot be held responsible for. At the end of the day, police have a lot of power to issue traffic tickets and just because you think you got away with something does not mean that you necessarily did.
If you are ever concerned you can always call our office, here at Acumen Law we are always happy to help.
