Hi,

I got a traffice violation ticket in Mississauga, ON as my car windows had tints.. anyhow, i paid the ticket / fine using the online pay ticket option.

I havent mailed any form / copy of ticket to the court. I thought as i have already paid the ticket so i dont need to mail anything.

Is my understanding correct?...

Please advice.

Thanks

How did the officer decide it was too dark? As far as I know, no police officer carries anything with him which accurately measures the tint on windows, so it's a judgement call on his part. What one officer finds unacceptable another may say it's okay?

Have a read of this.

If you've paid then that should be the end of it ... as I remember the last time I got a ticket you could check the status of any fines against you online ... but that was City of Calgary......

I saw on a programme some UK police doing just that. They pulled over some ridiculous spray-tan bimbette in a £50,000 Ranger Rover with tints and the police had a gadget to determine how much light they let in. Turned out they were illegal but he gave them the option to pull the tins off, which I thought was pretty magnanimous of him. The chavs whined about even that, naturally, IIRC.

The following link in no way helps Ontario residents but other provinces are more clear in their rules.

http://www.iwfa.com/iwfa/consumer_in...vincelaws.html

If it was just a ticket and not a court summons and it sounds as though it was just a ticket, you simply pay the fine and that's it.

I was pulled over for speeding a couple of years ago and got a ticket, paid it online and that was it.

I was pulled in the middle of nowhere, AB, some years ago for the crime of being 12km over the limit. I paid the fine online & that was the end of the matter. I did have the option of going to court if I wished, but on that occasion I didn't bother.

I don't know about other Provinces, but AB is very generous in the time it gives you to pay fixed fine tickets. I had three months or so for the above 'offence'.

When paying online you would have been given a confirmation number which constitutes your receipt that the matter has been resolved.

We police officers in Ontario do not need any such device as those in the UK mentioned below. We use observations to determine what is too dark. Basically if it did not come tinted from the dealership, 99% of the time its too dark. Notations on how much detail the officer could observe of the driver when looking through the window normally encompasses the evidence required on the stand.

So it comes down to the judgement of the individual officer to interpret a vaguely-written law. According to your interpretation, it appears almost every window-tinting operation in Ontario is legally installing an illegal product.

If 99% of window tinting is illegal, then when are these places going to be prosecuted or regulated? They're not are they, because the Province will lose the money from the fines and will also claim it's not their place to regulate that sort of business.

If too-dark windows are that much of an issue, why only give a fine but not make the vehicle owner remove the tinting before the vehicle is allowed on the roads again? This law appears to be a joke as there isn't any attempt to do anything other than collect fines. It appears to have little to do with road safety either, but seems to be solely aimed at being able to identify the vehicle occupants.

Youre quite right there it is solely aimed at identifying the occupants. In fact an interesting point is that in South Africa window tints are totally illegal. Why you ask? As they lose on average 1 officer a day they found that violent black males would open fire on officers unsuspectingly approaching cars where they could not see in. I challenge you to stop a vehicle for which you have reasonable grounds to do so in the middle of no where with back up 30 minutes away. The feeling of not having the faintest idea what is inside that vehicle when approaching it is not a pleasant one to say the least.

Why does the government not prosecute the companies providing the tint? For the same reason they dont prosecute the companies that mail order cannabis seeds to you. Its not illegal to provide the product... it is illegal to use it.

Im not sure but I believe the maximum amount of tine allowed in Ontario is 25%. Excluding limos and specialty vehicles of course.

i think this has been answered very well above. its not for the police to track down and prosecute these companies. yes we are there to enforce the law, but, if there is not the political will to legislate appropriately, then provide the budget to address the issue, there is little we can do. i can imagine the outcry if we started an operation on businesses illegally tinting windows, at the expense of an operation aimed at reducing domestic burglary for instance. anyway, as its been said, its not the sale, its the use, no one puts a gun to the head of the customer and says buy my tint or else.

with regard to the enforcement, light meters are not routinely carried in any province to my knowledge, and are only used in the UK by dedicated traffic officers. so, its not a percentage of the light allowed into the cabin that will be the issue, as we do not have the devices to measure it. it will be on the interpretation of the interior and exterior visibility given the nature of the tint, as stated in the legislation.

finally, i would be wary of the link given, this is after all testimony of someone working for the law firm who then goes on to advertise their services. how convenient.

Thank to both ExMetCop and Rae for your input.

I appreciate the points raised, especially in consider the author of the link. Either it's illegal or not, so why would limos and other speciality vehicles be allowed darker windows though?

its not a case of they are allowed to, simply a case of to enforce or not. imagine the scenario, i pull over limo on my own for tints. limo is full of drunken blokes highly unimpressed at being stopped. out they pour and the shit hits the fan. i'll get hurt i'm sure, but it won't be until someone is sprayed, tasered or beaten. then this now brings other cops to the scene and a real melee ensues. can you imagine the headlines the following morning.
now i know this may not happen, and ironically if i could see into some of the limo probably not at all, its just about picking your battles. so does it fall into the too hard to do category. no, because if we really wanted to it would just mean a visit to limo company in the day when they are lined up and empty.
then you get the complaints from local business owners and them losing revenue so having to let employees go.

there are better things we can be doing with our time as police officers.

Interesting point. I will look it up in the HTA when I get back to work as to whether there is actually an exception or not.

There are many many laws that have exceptions and exemptions, for good reasons. One of the reasons that a limo having tints is less of a concern would be : - Theyre generally operated by a proffesional driver and not ridden around in by gang land yardies lol. But that would be amusing now wouldnt it.

A window tint ticket would be an interesting one to take to court. I would like to see the outcome.