F me. The official police response is this was not a collision therefore officer driving away without exchanging information was entirely appropriate. Do police working in communications department have brains?
A Toronto woman is unimpressed after a police car turned and ran into her while she was crossing the street – an encounter caught on dashcam video by another driver.
www.cp24.com
"Wharton says she complained to the force, and a detective called her recently to say that there would be no ticket or repercussion because, by their definition, what happened was not technically a “collision.”
In a statement to CTV News, Toronto Police Service spokesperson Stephanie Sayer confirmed a scout car turned left onto Dufferin and stopped “before a collision occurred with the pedestrian,” adding Wharton grabbed onto the vehicle’s push bars.
“The officer rolled down the window to apologize, asked if she was ok and if she wanted him to pull over. The pedestrian said no and continued walking. She reported the incident nine days later. The incident was investigated, and seeing as the contact resulted in no injuries and/or damage, this incident did not meet the definition of a collision as defined by the Highway Traffic Act,” she wrote.
“The incident may have understandably startled the pedestrian, for which the officer apologized, however this was not a collision and the pedestrian was not “hit” by a police car,” she wrote.
Biking lawyer David Shellnutt told CTV News that the definition used by the officers makes more sense in an insurance context, where damage from a crash has to be accounted for and then paid for.
But regarding public safety, he said it’s important to treat any situation with contact between a vehicle and a person seriously.
“In this case, there is contact. But now they’re saying it’s not a collision. So, it really seems like the law is up to the TPS, its own interpretation,” he said."
toronto.citynews.ca
