You should be in the clear.

 

That happened to me last summer at St. Cliair and Victoria park. Got a red light ticket even though the photos clearly showed me turing right on the red with my signal on.

Ultimately had to have a lawyer friend deal with it for me and set a court date. On the filing, however, he wrote a little note asking the prosecutor to review it. I got a letter in the mail a few weeks later indicating the charges were dropped.

 

When it's a clear cut case like this, you don't need a lawyer. It will be thrown out as soon as they see the pictures. The person that reviwes the ticket, before it's sent, should have tossed it. Normaly they do but no one is perfect.

 

The problem, as I recall, is that I could not even book a court date by mail. I had to go to the downtown courthouse between something like 9am and 4pm just to schedule the trial and then show up again during daytime hours for the trial at a later date. I would have had to cancel at least 2 half days of fully booked patients just to contest it. It would have been cheaper and easier just to pay the ticket. My lawyer friend did it for free (and I got him a gift certificate to a nice restaurant as as thanks).

They've made these like parking tickets - in many cases it's easier to pay them than it is to fight them, even when you're in the right.

 

Ahhh ok, I wasn't aware ot that. I'm in the traffic field so anything that has to do with how the courts deal with this is, is out of my knowledge.

 

I believe when making a right hand turn on a red, you still need to make a complete stop (like at a stop sign) prior to negotiating the turn. Would the red light camera catch you if you signal and roll though the turn without stopping ?

 

Only if you go faster than the threshold speed that triggers the system, usually 25km/h. BUT even then, during the review of the pictures, it will be dismissed if it is clearly visible that the car was making a right turn. The pictures can easily tell this. On a typical red light running picture, the second image shows the car half way into the intersection. They can tell if the vehicle slid in too, the back end of the car will be up and the brake light will be on. A legitimate red light violator will have difficult time talking themselves out of a ticket in court.

 

Great info, thanks.

 

Sadly this is true, and came from way too many people used to sending not-guilty response and requesting a trial date in hope the cop wouldn't show up in court and the charges get dismissed (in a case where the ticket was issued by a police constable in person), the resulting volume bogged down the system so it's no longer profitable and cases were getting dismissed for too long a waiting time.

So the government decided to turn the table by changing the system to requiring in-person trial date setting.

What I'm not sure about is if this goes right across Ontario or is only a GTA "thing", as I seem to recall hearing this is not the case in rural Ontario.