So I lost the jeep on a wet road, making a legal overtake and the back wheels got out from behind me and thru me off a 4foot drop into a ditch where I rolled twice! my legs are all scrapped up and my arm is all brused, but im fine. no one was in the vehicle.

Im getting charged for careless cause the cop figures I could have stayed behind the little old lady doing 60 in a 80 zone and avoided the chance of loosing controll on a fully legal overtake?.

Ugh glad you were alright and didn't get thrown out.

I would look into the charges, depending on your insurance, it could impact what they give you based upon what you were doing with it at the time. Careless driving, much like Mike's accident, is a general one-charge-fits-all and doesn't usually hold up very well when challenged, but it takes the time and effort to challenge it with nothing really on your side as hard concrete evidence it was as you say...a he said, she said.

Wow, glad to see you're alright.

Must've been a crazy scare.

How can they lay charges if they weren't there to witness the accident?

Strange.

I'm sure you'll get this thrown out.

Wait, whats a legal overtake?

First of all, glad you are OK! Jeep looks a bit of a mess...is it fixable?

As for the charges, I am not so sure like everyone else that this can be easily beaten. The cop has a point. You COULD have stayed behind the little old lady, that would not have been illegal. Your overtake (passing) was legal UNTIL the point where you lost control. I believe the definition of careless driving (at least from about 40 years ago) is something like: "driving in such a fashion as to lose control of the vehicle and thereby endagering someone". You DID lose control, and yourself and possibly the little old lady were endangered.

Nothing personal, and I HOPE you can beat it....just saying, I think it might be pretty tough.

ya, I agree but im thinking now that it had tobe black ice, cause the road was just wet from like 2 hours before that and there was a cold wind in that part of the road. It was +2 out so i had no reason to believe the roads were slippery. I just started to turn the s teering wheel and accelerate, and the whole jeep decided to start to drift sideways. At that point there was no getting control back. Im gonna fight, definatly dont think I should be paying $450.

The roof on the jeep has a width long crimp in it, and the one headlight left, is 6 inches more to the right then it used to be.

Glad to hear you're OK Jay. That's one nasty accident though. I would imagine by the looks of it that she will be a right off for sure.
You could make the most of it and take the insurance money and pour it into your DSM's.

Wow Jay, glad to hear you're ok man!

As for the charges, fight it but at the same time I as well agree with the cop. You are still guilty until proven innocent, so its up to you to prove it. Maybe Points or HELP could give you a hand?

Im thinking help too,

And ya, If I dont get enough back to buy something reliable, then Its going into the Talons.. If I get anything.

Hate to give you bad news on top of this, but the $450. is only the beginning. This is going to affect your insurance rates huge for years...

Hope you are able to beat it!!

Ya i know thats why im trying to avoid as much as posable. I have one free claim still tho.

ARE YOU HIGH... he is the isn't the one charging someone they have to prove HE was at fault without a resonable doubt, Ask for a disclosure on the case and I bet money you will see the cops have nothing.


When you are the the accuser or one laying the charges you have to prove WITHOUT a REASONABLE DOUBT that the defendent is guilty.

I got arrested and charged by 3 cops criminaly for stunt riding and my lawyer maybe said a hand full of words well the cops couldn't prove Me guilty, So I walked out of there with nothing but the cops oweing ME money.

Just keep your story straight and don't change it, THe cops will mess up.

I think you are referring to criminal matters, Sven. The highway traffic act offences are not "beyond a reasonable doubt", at least not here in Ontario. Even civil cases are not "beyond a reasonable doubt" but "preponderance of the evidence".

Ontario IS a police state, and you are guilty until proven innocent. This has been the case for some time now, and the "50 over" laws just drove this home!

As for disclosure: all they need is a picture of his damaged car in the ditch. That, and a cop's "professional opinion" that he was driving in an unsafe manner would be good enough for any judge in Ontario.

Ya, that is what the cop said to me when i told him i did nothing wrong. But I will stick to the fact that i was not in a unsafe cercumstance and In my opinion it was a safe and legal overtake... untill I hit some ice or something. I could have been more cautious but I had ne reason t believe that that part of the road was slippery when it was +2 out and the rest ofthe roads were fine.

The stupid thing is, if there wasnt a 4foot drop i would have just ended up in a ditch or snow bank and been able to drive away. but because I flew off a 4 foot ledge,I gained more momentom.

So its the citys fault for not putting gardrails hehe.

There is the problem right there. "In your opinion". In the Ontario courts, your opinion doesn't count anywhere NEAR as much as a "trained professional" police officer who has no reason to lie.

His opinion will win out over yours for two reasons:
a) he is a trained professional police officer with no reason to lie
b) you DID end up in the ditch, confirming that HIS opinion that it was UNsafe is the superior opinion.

Again, really HOPE you beat this....but wouldn't hold my breath....

Glad your alright man. This is a classic short-wheelbase Jeep accident. I was with my buddy in his Jeep when the same thing happened. They get spun around real quick.

I'm with Ziggy on this-I've been to court many times in Ontario to fight traffic violations and you have to prove yourself NOT guilty; otherwise with no proof or reasonable argument otherwise, the judge will always side with the cop.
On a side note, one of the reasons I got rid of my Jeep Liberty was the tendency for the rear end to come around at any stab of the throttle in slippery conditions in 2wd. My girlfriend would not even drive it in the rain without putting it in 4-high. I think just too short of a wheelbase.

This is good enough for me...don't know how that would fly in court, but i lost control once in my mom's Ford Explorer Sport...same thing, short wheel base, 4.0L RWD, and slippery roads...i wasn't passing though, i was just going around a mellow bend...i sort of kept it on the road but basically drifted the bend, but i was 75% over the yellow line, if there was an on-coming vehicle, i'd probably not be here saying this..

unforunatly on the sun visor, it actually says avoid arrupt manuvours. So I dont think i can blame it on the jeep.

But just to add, the awd sucks on it too! in awd, not 4wd, it struggles to make parking lot turns, thats why i never put it in awd. Even in rwd the rear factory limited slip seems to have been designed by idiots!

You know, I dont recomend anyone buy a liberty!

The Cherokee on the other hand is awesome
I put it in 4WD at the first signs of slippery, and it is great!

There is one thing that will probably help you, and I'm sure any of the paralegal firms will tell you this if you hire them.

So Careless driving in HTA says:
Every person is guilty of the offence of driving carelessly who drives a vehicle or street car on a highway without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway and on conviction is liable to a fine of not less than $400 and not more than $2,000 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than six months, or to both, and in addition his or her licence or permit may be suspended for a period of not more than two years. 2009, c. 5, s. 41.

Key phrase is "Without due care and attention"
Basically, you don't have to be a perfect driver, and never crash, you just have to have done everything that an average driver would be expected to do.
If you were passing in a designated zone, and passing under the speed limit, then you didn't do anything that anybody else would not have done, and therefore you were not being careless.

Although it does seem like "Guilty until proven innocent" it isn't entirely.
Since the police officer wasn't there, how can he prove you did something that was "Careless" all he saw is your car off the road. Even though he is a professional and unbiased etc. He didn't see it so he can only speculate as to what happened.

The HTA should just say "every person is guilty" and leave it at that...

The police don't need to SEE what happened, or they would be useless in pretty much EVERY accident. They arrive on the scene AFTER the fact and DEDUCE what happened from the circumstances. They even have specialists for this: "reconstructionists".
It is still the preponderance of the evidence. If you are standing over a corpse with a smoking gun, you are going to be found guilty whether anyone saw you shoot or not. Maybe not the best example, as that is criminal law, where "beyond reasonable doubt" applies...but I think you get the idea.

The argument is still simple...Did the majority of the drivers on the road end up in the ditch that day? No, yet you did. Therefore, you did not use "due care and attention". If you DID use due care and attention, and circumstances were REALLY that unpredictable, then the majority of the cars on the road that day should have ended up in the ditch.

Rob, I think you summed up the meaning of the HTA pretty well, even the actual wording is a LITTLE more complicated...

Maybe you could amend that to: "everyone is guilty if the cop says so".

I might be dreaming, but the argument I would use is: does every vehicle in the ditch after a police officer drive by have a ticket on the window for careless driving?

If Jay, at any other portion of the road, just glided into the ditch on all fours, would he had been fined? Do the police follow tow trucks around? If a mechanical fault, such as a tire blowing, is the fault of the loss of control, is that careless driving?

With a driver's abstract mostly clean, it would be clear to show that x many years of driving, the experience I had, my observations, there was no indication that my vehicle would respond in the way that it did. The vehicle was out of control - I was not out of control of the vehicle.

Prosecuting on this is, as already been said, guilty until proven innocent. It really seems like they can pull anybody over at any time and premeditate that they might be in an accident no matter what they were doing at the time.

Unfortunately, you are in Ontario which, by the sounds of it, varies greatly from Saskatchewan. As much as the deducing what happened, that would be more at 'who is at fault'. In this case though, the whole incident is fully clear, except for the non-observable action just before the loss of control, which would be the point of debate. How, in a court of law, is the police officer going to prove you were driving with 'undue and attention' just before the accident? Just because you ended up in the ditch should not be enough, but since I don't know the precedents and etc... it may be enough.

It really seems this 'careless driving' ticket is really getting out of hand really fast, especially since every accident could be appended with one.

I would just take what others on here are saying and put together your case.
Take photos of your tires if they were in good shape and document them if its in your favor. Document as much as you can remember about the whole thing as specific as you can get it.
Good luck with it courts suck but remember you have your day in court and its you who is fighting for your finances not the cop he gets paid either way so in a case like this where he came upon the scene he has little to go by where you were there for the whole thing.
What year was your jeep?

2002 limited edition, 4x4 fully loaded with 150k..spotless

, The insurance company even agrees with me that it was black ice and i did nothing wrong. And could not have predicted or prevented this unless I drove 20 kms under the limit all day and never turned my steering wheel.

They gave me a rental car(Kia Soul) and told me to start looking for a replacement right away. Ill know what im getting for the jeep by next week.

If you can get the insurance companies "professional opinion" in writing, that could go a LONG way in court on the charges. Your own word is worth basically zero to the judge, but someone who investigates accidents all day long for a living....they might be believed!

Good luck!

What Ziggy said. See if you are able to get your insurance company to either provide you a written letter stating that or testify in court. Some very good news if you can make it tangible.

Sorry to break hearts but companies don't care or take into consideration weather conditions.

I'm one of those Insurance Professionals everyone is referring too.

Not as far as vehicle replacement, I havent even pleaded, and they are pushing me to buy a replacement already! But I dont think they will help my case.

They take into consideration charges, if charges aren't there, what do they have to base their premiums off of?

This isn't about the insurance rate increase, yet, but staving the charges of careless driving. The court cares about weather conditions and circumstances etc...

I would get a lawyer to deal with this charge - wouldn't risk getting stuck with careless driving charge (7points ?)

Ya my paralegal says most important is to get rid of the careless, to something less. then try to come clean and inoocent. I meet with him tomorrow

Just an update, I got $7410 for the jeep!! And I hired Help to fight my case.

Keep us informed please. And GOOD LUCK!!