The limitation periods for IRPs, ADPs, 24-hour Prohibitions and Notice of Intent letters confound most people. What mystifies us is why the person subject to the prohibition should have such a short period to file for review. To us some of the time periods can only serve to disadvantage the applicant. And we wonder if this is the undeclared rational. Particularly with respect to IRPs, since the OSMV is not required in law to render a decision in 21 days.
24-Hour Prohibitions
Take 24-hour prohibitions for example. If you receive one, you cannot have the matter reviewed before the 24 hours have expired. So the purpose of the review is to have the 24 hour expunged from your record. There are good reasons to do this.
When it was introduced, 24 hour prohibitions were just that: 24 hours in which you could not drive. You have only 7 days to investigate it and make the decision concerning whether you will pay the $100 and file for a review. If you are past the 7 days, in most cases you are out of luck.
The problem is that it is no longer simply an issue of having it on you record. If you get a 24-hour prohibition you can bet dollars to donuts that a Notice of Intent to Prohibit is coming your way. On top of the fact that a 24-hour now triggers other consequences (see for example IRPs), after the 7 days are over and your chance to dispute the matter has evaporated, the gears start turning in Victoria ultimately culminating with a letter telling you that you will be prohibited usually for several months.
So during the 7-day period no one tells you of the jeopardy you face. You have only 7 days to decide, and there seems a deliberate void of information about the fact that you are likely about to receive a longer prohibition because you did not successfully dispute your 24-hour prohibition.
Why 7 days? What is the downside to the Government if it were 30 days? The 7 days is an arbitrary period. The evidence is not going to go missing in 30 days, and the OSMV is not losing sleep about whether you will dispute the prohibition. So the OSMV is not disadvantaged by a longer period.
Should you not be entitled to know, before you make the decision whether to dispute your 24-hour prohibition, that you will receive a long prohibition if you do not dispute it? We think you should.
Notice of Intent Letters
About that Notice of Intent to Prohibit, it comes if there is an indication on the basis of your driving record that you pose a threat to public safety. Maybe you do. What happens is when a conviction or notation shows on your record, for example from a 24-hour prohibition or when you pay a ticket, your record will be flagged for review. You usually do not think about that when you decide to simply pay the ticket because it is only $138. It turns out the $138 is the least of your concerns.
If you have a short driving history, or other recent notations, and depending on the seriousness of the recent offence, someone will look at your driving abstract and decide how long to prohibit you.
Perhaps you deserve a prohibition because you pose a risk to public safety. We can accept that. What concerns us is that without an exception, every person who has ever called us with a Notice of Intent to Prohibit reported that it arrived 5 days or more after the date on the letter. And of course, you have only 21 days to make your case from the date of the Notice of Intent.
If the letter is dated Tuesday, it will typically arrive in your mailbox the following Monday. So when you get home Monday night, you now have only 2 weeks to get everything together to speak to the concerns raised in your driving history.
It typically takes only a day for a letter to get from Vancouver to Victoria when we mail it. Our suspicion is that the letters do not make it into the mail on the same day that they are printed. Although we do not think that this is some nefarious attempt to steal a few days from you, it seems likely that it is a systemic error which has the consequent effect of depriving you of a few days to collect your material and make your case.
Immediate Roadside Prohibitions (IRPs)
We discussed the 7-day period for IRPs back in January (here). What makes no sense to us is, like a 24-hour prohibition, with respect to 3 and 7 day prohibitions for blowing Warn, the purpose of the review is to expunge the prohibition from your record. So there is no downside to providing people with more than 7 days to file for a review.
With respect to 30 and 90-day IRPs, the only party significantly disadvantaged by delaying the matter is the applicant. If it takes two weeks to complete the process, the rule could simply be that the OSMV has 7 days from when you file for review to have a hearing, and 7 more days to render a decision. As it stands, the 7-day period to file for a review disadvantages the driver because it may not be enough time to collect evidence and make an informed decision.
Administrative Driving Prohibitions (ADPs)
There is an outside limitation period for ADPs, i.e. that the prohibition comes into effect 21 days from the date of service, so a decision is to be rendered by the OSMV in 21 days. It makes some sense that you have only 7-days to file for your review. The OSMV needs to get the decision out, so you can see a rational to the 7-day period.
The problem, as we discussed before (here), is that you are not told the jeopardy you face when you make the decision. The Notice does not tell you that you cannot drive a vehicle not equipped with an interlock. It does not tell you that you need to take the Responsible Driver Program. It does not tell you that all of this will cost about $3000.
You are informed of this after it is too late too file for a review. We think that this is grossly unfair.
Fairness
In the interest of fairness, we think you should either be told of the punishment or possible punishment before the limitation period expires, or alternatively you should be able to file for a review of the driving prohibition within 30 days, and only after you have been fully informed of the full consequences of the prohibition. On a balance of convenience, the Government is not disadvantaged by a 30-day limitation period. As it stands, the impression is that the limitation periods are designed to take advantage of the fact that drivers will not know the full consequences of the prohibition until it is too late to do anything about it.
Individuals are held to strict timelines. But the OSMV doesn’t even need to render a decision in 21 days under the IRP scheme. How is that fair?