I got caught in a speed trap in Canada. I live in California. The ticket was for 5 kph over the speed limit. Fine was for $66 which I paid online. How does this effect my drivers license in California? I haven’t had a speeding ticket in probably 20 years. I don’t want a point on my license. Anyway to find out about this?
Thanks
Where in Canada? Which province? You should be able to find out by looking at the provincial law.
It was Alberta.
I am good with Canada. I paid the fine. I just want to know about California, whether I will have points on my license
My suggestion is to ask the California DMV. If you want to try researching it yourself online, the key word would be “reciprocal”, as in “Do Alberta and California have reciprocal agreements?”
Hmmm… Check out this article on Wikipedia, which seems to say that California is one of six states that are NOT part of the reciprocal arrangement with Canada.
Good luck!
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/dl/driversafety/neg_operator.htm
There’s a list of out-of-state offenses that get points here. The first one is “Speed/too fast or over speed limit.” I can’t find anything that says California has a certain speed over the limit that you need to be going in order to get points.
Is this a typo? You got a ticket for going roughly 3 mph over the speed limit? Is that even a reliable measurement?
I thought speeding fines were higher, too. Was it a photo radar ticket? If so, it doesn’t count points on your license because it’s a fine for the owner of the vehicle, not the driver.
Legal advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Thanks for the replies. Should I repost under IMHO or is that something the moderator does.
The ticket was radar. Not sure if it was photo or not. Don’t understand about fine for the owner, not driver. It was my car and I was driving.
I think the officer new the ticket was bogus. I was pulled over with a group of cars. She said said I was 30 kph over but she dropped it to 5kph over posted speed limit. Speed limit 60 ticket says I was going 65. I just checked, it was radar/laser.
Does the fact that California does not have reciprocal agreement mean that I am off the hook as far as the point.
I think she would have let it go except that my nephew was in the back seat without a seat belt. He also got a ticket.
I will check out the links and see what I can find. It really was upsetting as I was driving in Canada for at least a week and was very careful about not speeding. My son and nephew made fun of me because the whole time driving in Canada, every car would pass us.
Thanks
It’s photo radar if there’s no traffic stop, just a radar triggers a camera and a ticket gets sent through the mail to the registered owner. It doesn’t count as points because the driver isn’t identified. Clearly that wasn’t the case here. I hadn’t realized that Alberta had such puny fines for actual speeding tickets.
California does have a reciprocal agreement, just not that reciprocal agreement.
Maybe it’ll move at the speed of bureaucracy and you’ll get lucky.
Yeah, just watch your incoming mail and hope nothing happens. I mean, what are your options? You’re not going to Alberta to fight it, are you? You probably can’t, even if you want to, given that you’ve already paid the ticket online. My guess is that you posted here not to get any advice about what to do, but simply to find out in advance what is going to happen. And we’re really not sure about that part. The only thing you can do is to sit tight and hope for the best. Good luck!
Here in Ontario, the police don’t even bother giving tickets for anything less than 15 KM/h over
I just saw this. It’s routine in Ottawa that they drop the charge to the minimum allowed (15kmh in our case, unless the driver was doing sometjhing more dangerous than speeding… cutting off people etc.
And just to kind of clarify what BrianJ is saying, they do this as a favour because it drops the dollar amount of the fine and sometimes removes all the points. Yes, the minimum in Alberta is 5km/hr over the limit, but you usually would not actually be stopped for that unless you were speeding in a construction zone or school/playground zone.
I don’t understand what the OP is afraid of exactly? It’s a speeding ticket, for 5 over the limit, what repercussions exactly do you fear? You paid the fine, so what’s to worry about? Your driving record going to shit? Insurance rates going through the roof? Over one ticket, only 5 over the limit? Really? When you’ve never gotten a ticket before?
Not really seeing what’s to worry over here. Can anyone explain?
Who cares if you get a point on your license? You can rack up a silly number of them before facing any consequences and they go away in a few years, so unless you’re about to embark on a career as a drunken street racer don’t worry about it.
Now, your insurance company might find out about the ticket and adjust your rates accordingly, but that’s a whole separate deal from the state/province license agency reciprocity. I would suspect a ticket for 3MPH over will probably have a negligible effect on your insurance rates.
I was worried about getting a point because I have been a careful driver, no speeding ticket in probably 20 years, did not want my insurance to go up because I was 5 kph over speed limit. I will just wait and see.
Would it even be reported to your insurance company at all? They might never even find out about it.