Man with only months to live testifies in advance to beat red-light camera ticket

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/04/2017 (3119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A dying Winnipeg man is so determined to use his red-light camera ticket as a way to push for longer amber lights, he testified in advance Wednesday, just in case he dies before his September trial.

James Aisaican-Chase, who pleaded not guilty to running a red on Oct. 16, 2015 and rebuffed prosecution attempts to drop the charges owing to his terminal cancer, told the court about his defensive driver training and why he was right to maintain a steady speed when the light flashed amber on Bishop Grandin Boulevard.

"I am fighting this ticket the way I’m fighting the cancer," Aisaican-Chase told reporters outside the Broadway courthouse. "I intend to fight the cancer until I’m 100 years old, and if it doesn’t work out that way then it’s all in God’s hands."

Aisaican-Chase, then 69 and now 71, had borrowed his wife’s car to get to a medical appointment. He’d driven the black Volkswagen many times before, said the retiree, who used to be in the military and later worked as an aircraft maintenance engineer.

He was familiar, he said, with how the vehicle reacted to a "panic stop." If he had done one on Bishop Grandin that fall day, Aisaican-Chase said, "I would have ended up in the middle of the intersection."

Instead, for his car taking nearly a third of a second longer than the four seconds allotted for the amber light he drove through, the senior got a ticket for running a red.

".29 seconds into the red, that’s not a red light runner," Todd Dube of Wise Up Winnipeg told reporters after the hearing. "It’s not even visible to the human eye."

 

Publication ban instituted, overturned

Wise Up Winnipeg is a local group that pushes for longer amber lights and argues vehemently that photo enforcement is strictly about revenue, not safety. Aisaican-Chase reached out to Dube because he was surprised when he got a ticket in the mail.

He went through the intersection on an amber, he said, because it wasn’t safe to stop and he expected the amber would last long enough for him to clear the intersection.

That it wasn’t, he said, came as a surprise.

Dube is hoping Aisaican-Chase’s case will help Wise Up Winnipeg argue for longer amber lights at certain intersections across the city. But for several hours Wednesday, it seemed the court was trying to keep the case and those arguments out of the public eye.

Although there was no request from the prosecutor or defence for a publication ban, the justice of the peace instituted a ban on the proceedings. After numerous media inquiries seeking explanation for the unusual move, she called a second hearing to overturn her own ban. She provided no explanation for either decision except for telling the court she didn’t have the "jurisdiction" to implement a ban in the first place.

Four seconds too short: expert

The organization plans to bring experts in the field to testify during the September trial. One of them, retired engineer David Grant, was in court Wednesday.

When it comes to timing amber lights, Grant told reporters, "These are safety issues, they’re safety calculations."

"The only time four seconds works is on low-speed roads with good conditions," Grant said.

Although Aisaican-Chase testified the weather was nice and the roads clear the day he got the ticket, the speed limit was 80 km/h, and unlike other roads that have advance flashing lights to warn of an impending red light, the lights on Bishop Grandin did not.

"If it’s perfect, (the driver) can stop in time," Grant said. "If it isn’t perfect, you sail through."

Aisaican-Chase said he feels like he’s being penalized for "sailing through," for doing what defensive driver training taught him to do in cases where he feels he can’t safely stop. He’s said he fighting the ticket because he doesn’t want other drivers to go through the same thing.

"When I got the ticket, I felt unsafe," he said.

Every intersection should be given its own unique amber time, Dube said. Looking specifically at Bishop Grandin Boulevard, he said Wise Up Winnipeg has "determined it should be 5.7 seconds."

Aisaican-Chase is hoping to be around for the trial and its outcome but said he’s been told he should expect to die by the end of June. He’s hoping clinical trials, which he starts soon, will prolong his life.

"I believe in fighting," he said. "I believe in what I’m doing."

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca