So really who’s fault is it that this continues? You have a right to fight the ticket and a right to lodge a complaint. You chose to do neither.
Oh sure… its’ easy to say “why bother when nothing changes”, but I’m sure if enough people fought the tickets and/or enough people lodged complaints someone out there would take notice.
At the very least you would maintain some sort of moral high ground when you complain about it publicly.
Sure. I could have complained:-) Sometimes it is best to pick your battles when you can win.
And if everyone said that, we’d have no complaints at all. 
There is no law that says stop for any seconds, my mom got pulled over at 5 corners and the cop told her, you dont have to stop for any amount of seconds, but if i stick the radar gun on you and it doesn’t turn to zero, then ill give you a ticket for a rolling stop.
The traffic section is a position you apply for within the rcmp, the work is gay and the pay is better than a normal rcmp officer, you have to be a member for 5 years before you can even be in the traffic sector. If you are a traffic cop, you pull someone over whenever a traffic rule is broken.
If you’re a regular member you don’t pull someone over unless they are doing something noticeably out of place.
The number of traffic officers assigned to an area is a reflection of how many incidents there are, i.e traffic accidents, etc.
You people are ridiculous, they are not just out here collecting money to keep a job, if they don’t pull over anyone they still have a job, the money doesn’t go straight back to them, the government collects it. If the amount of accidents decreases (As well as drunk driving charges etc.) they reduce the amount of traffic cops, if your a traffic cop in rupert this doesn’t mean you lose your job, they pay for you to move somewhere else or you change back to a regular member if you want to stay in an area for the rest of your term.
Since there is no law stating you have to stop for X seconds, if you dispute it in court, you will have the charge dropped. You should dispute almost any charge, if the police doesn’t show up (traffic usually does show up, ie. Cnst. Majors) you have the charges dropped as well, i have friends who have had charges dropped or at least reduced, i find it very unlikely (and think your full of crap) that rcmp are handing out tickets for laws that dont exist, rcmp are at risk for losing their jobs if they cant justify what they do. A cop cant pull you over whenever he or she feels like it, they must have some suspicion or other reasonable grounds to stop you, stopping for a RECOMMENDED amount of time wouldnt be reasonable
Going to court next month for disputing my “Speeding in a school zone” ticket.
This happened more than a year ago now, it took that long for them to send me a letter with the court date, I thought they must have forgotten about me.
It was about 7 minutes to 9am. I am driving my daughter to school…just entering into a school zone by Conrad, slowing down from 40 to 30 just before I passed the school zone sign.
I see this van just zooming away in front of me, thinking to myself: “Ha, hope this sucker gets caught by the cops”…and out of nowhere, this cop runs out onto the road to stop me. I roll down my window, no hello or anything, just straight out rude “You’re speeding in a school zone”. I nicely told him there is no way I was speeding, and that the van in front of me must have been going 50km/hr. “I don’t believe you; your license.”…
I was getting very irritated with the fact he was being so rude, and also because now I had only 3 minutes to get my daughter to school on time…
He took 7 minutes…(I timed him) to get back to me. By then I was fuming.
The cop took out his little ticket pad, and tells me I was going 55km/hr and that he’s writing me up a ticket.
After that I couldn’t really hold it together and told him he must have been blind not to see that van, and accuse me of speeding when I wasn’t. I mentioned the fact I had a child in my car and it wouldn’t really make sense for me to speed in a school zone trying to get my kid to school 
… then he smugly says “I need you to sign on the bottom of the ticket”. I told him straight out he’s wrong and I don’t like being called a liar, and he didn’t say anything. Always seemed like he was amused and satisfied with himself. I rolled up the window as I glared at him, dropped the kiddo off to school late because he had so much to look at on my clean driving record…
Went straight to the Govt office to dispute it.
What an ass.
I couldn’t believe it.
Can’t wait to see how it turns out next month, and if he shows up.
[quote=“burningrubber”]
You people are ridiculous, they are not just out here collecting money to keep a job, if they don’t pull over anyone they still have a job, the money doesn’t go straight back to them, the government collects it. [/quote]
The money goes directly to the City of Prince Rupert, which uses it to fund the traffic positions.
He made you sign your ticket Gooby? That’s odd. :S Hmm–maybe the one ticket I’ve gotten didn’t need a signature or something.
As a suggestion–from what I’ve heard from friends who have disputed tickets, everyone who goes to court to dispute (there will be a dozen or so people with you) will get some form of a deduction. Whether or not the ticket is removed is up to the judge and is dependant on whether or not the police officer shows up. If it was a duty cop, you might be in luck. If it was a traffic cop, he may very well be there to back up his ticket. With that said, don’t bring up the fact the cop was rude–the judge doesn’t care about RCMP customer service, he or she cares about whether or not you broke traffic laws. That being said, your best bet is telling the truth about the speed you were going, without mentioning the van or the treatment you received from the officer who ticketed you. But hey–good for you for sticking it out.
Know of someone who took video of a particular cop on a particular day rolling through the same stop sign on 3 different occassions as he did his circle tour about down 2nd and up 3rd. According to staff sargeant vido was a waste of time and complaint was not legit: officer was responding to calls…yeah, yeah, yeah.
I knew somebody would find it 
Notice the difference between Rupert and Terrace? Also note the fact that the first (and largest) expenditure of fine revenue is the salary of a traffic officer.
your right about the tickets funding the traffic officers, but i doubt that he gives out more tickets because of this, there’s one specialized traffic cop and 264,038 in traffic revenue at a wage of say 90,000? his job isn’t really in jeopardy if he doesn’t hand out as many tickets
No, that’s not what I said. I said the tickets are directly related to funding the position. Not the individual in the position, obviously.
Any explanation why Terrace – a town with more population, more RCMP, more traffic, more stop signs, more traffic signals, a highway through it, and more cars – writes fewer tickets than Prince Rupert? They don’t seem to spend their traffic fines on traffic positions, either.
Here’s what I said earlier, just to be clear:
Terrace RCMP traffic division has a larger patrol area. I believe it extends from Tyee east to Burns Lake (or somewhere out there) and south to Kitimat and north to Dease lake. I am not positive of the locations but you get the idea.
And what do the Hazelton and Smithers police do 
We have to be open to the possibility that are main variable here–the amount of driving violations–might just be higher in Prince Rupert than in Terrace.
I am referring to Highway Patrol…not the local police. Terrace traffic division includes the Highway patrol which has a large area to patrol compared to Prince Rupert.
Well, there’s no evidence of that at all. Given that all the other variables are higher in Terrace (population, number of roads, traffic signals, stop signs, etc), then you’d expect that the number of violations would be higher, not lower. Unless you’re suggesting there’s something different about drivers in Rupert verses Terrace.
The only evidence we have is that Rupert RCMP like to give out tickets for 2 or 3 second stops (instead of 5 seconds), and that the Rupert RCMP fund a traffic position using the fine money. And that Terrace RCMP write a lot fewer tickets than Rupert RCMP.
Note that the Rupert RCMP also identify Traffic Enforcement as being one of their priorities or focus areas, as the PDF above explains.
Perhaps it’s just that simple: Rupert RCMP write more tickets because it’s one of their identified priority areas. Police write more tickets here because they’ve been told that it’s a priority?
[quote=“Hoser”]
Terrace RCMP traffic division has a larger patrol area. I believe it extends from Tyee east to Burns Lake (or somewhere out there) and south to Kitimat and north to Dease lake. I am not positive of the locations but you get the idea.[/quote]
Would that mean they would write fewer tickets or more?
I’d argue that you could write more tickets if you have more territory, right? Or at the very least, it shouldn’t matter. You can drive up the highway giving speeding tickets just as well as you can stay still and do it, I guess.
Thanks for the advice.
That was my plan, just straight out say I am certain I was not going the speed written up and see what happens. 
Wish me luck!