Question: Recently I went to court and fought a careless driving case for 5 points for a 3 car collision on black ice in Ontario. I won. I was the last car. I was told I was free to go, no points and no fine. Yesterday I purchased a car, and applied for insurance quotes. The record is showing “AT FAULT” and my insurance would be approx. 3 grand more/year. My question is, if it was thrown out of court so to say and I won, then why is it showing as AT FAULT? The accident was 2008. The court date was late Feb/2010. I am seriosuly concerned, and have never had a ticket before with clean driving abstract for 16 years.
Answer: There are generally two areas of penalty when you get in a collision, the first being legal (in your case a 6 demerit point Careless Driving charge), and the second being insurance. While the two are related, they are also separate. The insurance industry is beyond our scope of practice, so in this case the best advice would be to speak directly to your insurance company to understand how they classify collisions and if there has been an error in your instance.
Greg Currie
Office Manager, London