Help or suggestions on my ticket.

Not stopping at all at a stop sign/red light and not making a complete stop are two very different things IMO, although legally they are the same. Now if you just blew through with not even slowing the car down, then man up and pay the ticket. If you almost came to a stop but didn't then not a huge deal in my book safety wise, provided you looked for oncoming traffic. I'm guilty of the same thing at least a few hundred times if not more in my 20 years driving. Absolutely no one else at the intersection, I've slowed down to a few km/h and just turned without making a complete stop. This is something I witness daily both in the province of Quebec and Ontario. Anyone who says they have never done this or something similar as a young driver or an old one is either a saint or a liar IMO. If you're a saint, then my hat goes off to you as there are not that many of you around.

About 10-12 years ago, there was this one newly put in stop sign that kept getting ripped out of the ground near my parents house in the back roads out of town. Some jerk decided he/she didn't like to have to stop there so he/she kept pulling the sign out. As a result of this there was frequently a police car that would park a little ways into the intersection trying to catch people who were not making the stop.

One day as I was going home, I made my stop at that particular sign as I always did. Anyways I made my stop and continued on my way and sure enough there was an officer watching, weird thing is you can't even see the stop line or the sign itself from where he was parked because it's a wooded area. About 2 kms down the road, literally like 100 meters from my driveway that cop pulls me over and says that I didn't make my stop and that if I wanted to argue with him I could do it in court. I can only guess that he was fed up of waiting to catch someone and along came the kid with the red sports car and the baseball cap on backwards and I became the perfect candidate for a ticket.

I contested the ticket of course, took pictures of the intersection from all the angles and marked all the directions/street names etc... When my court date arrived, the officer never even bothered to show up and all that was done was the judge asked me my side of the story. When I was done recounting what happened the judge looked at me straight in the eyes and said that no one in the court room could prove that what I was saying was untrue and that if I was lying then I was the one who was going to have to look myself in the mirror everyday, case dismissed. Point of my story is that some cops get off on being jackoffs and will resort to lying when they think you won't try to fight back.

I'm in no way condoning what you did but if I were you I would go through with contesting it, go to court and tell your side and hope for the best. You might get away with just the fine with no demerit points, then again maybe not, but be prepared to pay some court costs. Who knows, the cop might not show up and the whole thing could be dismissed.

It all depends on how important those points are to you.

/end rant