UPDATE Jan. 25th/17: To update everyone who might still be interested, all charges against me were withdrawn. After the video blew up, the officer wrote a special letter to have the charges withdrawn against me. The court had dropped the charges in September but didn't inform me until my court date which was scheduled for this month. Furthermore, the other driver in the video was charged instead and ended up paying the full fine for the ticket. Thanks everyone for kind messages supporting me. The dash cam saved me and I encourage everyone to get one.
UPDATE: This story has been posted on quite a few news sites; in fact I personally spoke with a journalist from the Toronto Star regarding the article he wrote about the video. Local news has contacted Peel Police and they said they were investigating the situation. The police state that the dash cam was not mentioned to the officer until he had the ticket written out which is true and I mentioned that in the video description. The issue I have is that before writing the ticket the officer really did not take the time to thoroughly investigate the situation and speak with me for more information. He first spoke with the other witnesses and driver to take their statements. Then the officer only asked me for my account of what happened, which I told him. He wrote this down and said our cars need to be moved from the intersection so we will speak more in the side parking lot after the tow trucks had moved them there. At this time, I was trying to get a hold of my brother to bring his laptop so we could try and retrieve the video since I wasn’t even sure if it saved (I’ve never had to use the dash cam before to retrieve footage). After our cars were towed to the side lot, the officer just took the names of my passengers down and then went into his car. He did not speak to me again before doing so and therefore I didn’t have an opportunity to tell him I had a dash cam with footage my brother is trying to retrieve. While the officer was still in his car my brother had come back with the video file saved on his laptop ready to show the officer. I waited for the officer to get out of his car to show him the footage. However, when the officer got out, the ticket was already written up and when we told him about the video he said I should have told him beforehand. Despite saying we would talk more once the cars were moved, he didn’t speak to me again and give me a chance to mention it; however, he did take time to speak to the other driver for a second time.
Some articles have reported that Constable Fischer from Peel said that the officer asked to see the video when we mentioned to him but we didn’t have the wire or electronics to show him. This is NOT TRUE. My brother had brought the wire(which we have proof of) and had it on his laptop ready to show the officer, but he refused to see it since the citation was already written up and said that I would have to show it in court. In fact, after I accepted that the officer would not change the ticket and I would have to fight it, I asked the officer if he wanted to watch the video anyway just to see what his opinion of it was. He refused once more saying he was not allowed to give an opinion on it so there was no point. I feel the officer should have done a better job with the investigation. There is a bus station right at the same intersection and perhaps the incident could have been caught on video there, which he could have looked into as well. I never really had an opportunity to speak to him again and present my evidence since I assumed he would do so after taking my initial statement. Just going by the statements of 2 witnesses (who in this case were clearly wrong) without at least speaking to me once more before writing the ticket is what I find unfair. If I did not have the dash cam in my car, I would have no other way to prove my innocence due to the cop faithfully taking the statements of these witnesses as the truth.
TL;DR: I got charged for careless driving. Two witnesses said it was my fault, police refused to look at my dash cam footage. Other driver got charged nothing.
