Brian Lawrie remembers the day he found his client, a 70-year-old woman, hiding behind the staircase at Old City Hall court.

"She felt like a criminal," he recalls. "A police officer had charged her with careless driving, and someone told her that careless driving carries the potential for six months in jail, which is in the Act, it terrified the life out of her.

Lawrie, the founder and CEO of Provincial Offences Informed Traffic Ticket Services (POINTTS), was able to calm his client. "A few months earlier, she was driving home, looked over at a store window and the traffic in front of her stopped. She collided with another car, but there were no injuries, no major damage. It was just momentary inattention, which doesn't mean careless driving. People who have never been in court before find it intimidating and embarrassing."

As a former police officer, Lawrie has more courtroom stories than you can shake a speeding ticket at. "An individual will walk in and expect that if they say `I didn't do it' or `I didn't mean to do it', that it'll carry the day, and of course, it doesn't."

Robb Knapper, sergeant of corporate communications for Toronto Police Services, agrees. "You can't just call me a liar. There's a burden of proof on you. I'm doing a job. I'm sitting at the foot of the Don Valley Parkway for a purpose , to stop people who are doing 140 kilometers an hour in a 90 kilometer zone."

Presenting a case in front of a justice of the peace, even in traffic court, requires knowing the proper procedures. "When you say that you're not guilty, you are saying to the court that you have the necessary knowledge to defend yourself. And that includes court procedures, rules of evidence, time limitations, all the factors involved in the provincial offenses act ‹ those two words are quite a mouthful," quips Lawrie.

Just because there's a mistake on your ticket doesn't mean you can walk away. "The courts and the legislators realize that the police officer is writing this ticket with the pad on his or her lap, in the dark at 2 a.m. under a dome light. You want a trial on the facts, as opposed to the paperwork."

Lawrie recalls an incident in 1974 when he was still a police officer, where he was at the scene of an accident. "There were two driver's licences in front of me, for the two people involved in the traffic accident. I wrote the other person's name on the ticket, but gave it to the person responsible.

"They came to court, thinking they were going to breeze through because there was somebody else's name on the ticket, but they were convicted."

Michael Turk, lawyer for the Automobile Protection Association, says many individuals will plead guilty just to bring the cost of the ticket down.

"Ninety per cent of the pleas are guilty pleas," he says. "If you have no experience fighting in court, you don't know what to expect in a plea bargain. You don't have a point of reference."
Turk says people don't understand the ramifications of pleading guilty."

They are always saying they're worried about points. "I tell them, that's the last thing you should be worried about. You could get a record under the Highway Traffic Act and it could skyrocket your insurance costs."

Lawrie agrees, it's convictions that matter. "Convictions stay around for five years. Your car insurance rate can go up to $5,000. That's tantamount to a driver's licence suspension for a lot of people because they can't afford it."

People who are charged with a Highway Traffic Act offence are guilty, if they are guilty of anything, of a minor regulatory mistake. "We're not dealing with criminals," says Lawrie.