Cross border tickets could haunt drivers
 

B.C. drivers are cheating Washington State out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by not paying American traffic fines. Now there's a move by Washington Licensing to work with the provincial government to collect on those outstanding tickets.

Thousands of B.C. residents head across the border every year, and many are getting into trouble because of bad driving habits.

More than 18,000 B.C. drivers were issued traffic tickets in Washington state between January 2007 and November 2008. But it turns out a lot of those drivers are just ignoring the tickets. A published report says about 3,200 of those tickets resulted in court warrants for failure to appear or pay.

You may not realize it, if you don't pay your fine in Washington, you lose your right to drive here. If you're caught again, you could have a real problem.

"The officer that stops you at the time has the option of writing a criminal traffic citation for driving while license suspended or they can take you to jail, arrest you, impound vehicle and take you to jail and hold you until you can appear before a judge," said Sgt. Freddie Williams of Washington State Patrol.

But Washington licensing department still wants more power to collect from B.C. traffic cheaters and is calling for a reciprocity agreement between Washington and B.C.

"If a B.C. driver were to get a traffic offence here, we could share that information with British Columbia and if they didn't pay that ticket, B.C. could hold them accountable by making sure their license got suspended until they came back and took care whatever the underlying problem is," said Brad Benfield of the Washington State Licensing Dept.

In other words, you could lose your license in both countries.

Gordon Campbell says he's open to hearing from Washington's Governor on this and has some advice for B.C. drivers.

"That's a whole lot of tickets. I think its always a good idea to pay your fines," he said.

An agreement would also mean that B.C. could go after bad drivers from Washington. In 2006 and 2007, B.C. issued 5,900 tickets to Washington State drivers, and 2,500 are still outstanding.

Makes sense imo

Quite the disparity in the amount of tickets issued on either side of the border. Are we going to the states in larger numbers than the yanks are coming up here? Or do we just drive more aggressively than they do?

^ more like we get more "hogging left lane while not passing" than they do if anything. LOL.

When i use to drive to seattle alot, i got so many washington tix lol.... thaank god if you pay them, it doesn't catch up to you here in suspension XD

Reciprocity means points will be collected on tickets issued in Washington, if they're not already.

weak


yup saw too many fucking idiot morons with BC plates hogging up the left lane..

:rolleyes:

BC drivers really dont know how to drive shit

-WHP targets BC drivers for speeding.
-There is a disproportionate amt of hwy patrols between the border and Bellingham
-Now that the CDN$ is weak again, there's less revenue generated from writing tickets to Canadians as less are travelling across the border
-They want ways to increase their collection of outstanding debt.

Fuck the WHPigs.

I've also seen BC drivers excessively speeding, tailgating and braking on i-5. It's a bloody disgrace.

There's an easy answer to screw them up totally. Just follow the speed limit.


Don't you just love intelligent comments?

A reasonable request if speed limits were set where they are safest - 85th percentile of traffic flow.



That's what you get for venturing into VIC :D

washington drivers tailgate too. they think they own the US highways. next tailgater is gonna get blinded by my custom HID reverse lights haahhahahhahahaha. take that...... but wait... i might get shot.

I remember one time a few years ago I was driving down to pick up buddy from SEATAC Airport. I saw more people pulled over by cops on my 2 hour drive down there then I had in the entire year in Metro Vancouver.

how do i pay the ticket if i lost the ticket?

this is gay....desperate american in need of cash

i hope bc tells them to screw themselves. what benefit does signing this bring to BC. none.

Reciprocity. ICBC will be able to assign points on tickets written in Washington state and collect money that way.

Time to get a Valentine 1