Receiving a notice of intent to prohibit doesn’t mean you will automatically be suspended, but it does mean you will have to take some action to ensure that you do not get suspended.
When you receive a notice of intent to prohibit, it is just that, a notification that ICBC intends to prohibit you from driving. It does not mean that you are
going to be prohibited from driving, but only if you follow the steps in the letter. You must make a submission to the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles within 21 days from the date on the letter to explain the reasons why you should not be prohibited and why they should not suspend your license.
Upon receiving your submissions, ICBC has several options. They can do nothing and continue to prohibit your license; they can reduce the length of
your driving prohibition or they can revoke the prohibition entirely.
Generally speaking, once you have enough conduct on your driving record to generate a notice of intent to prohibit, ICBC’s mind is pretty much made up
and you will have to provide compelling evidence to prevent yourself from serving a driving prohibition.
This is of course where an experienced driving lawyer would be of assistance. ICBC may also not prohibit your license if you remove some of the convictions from your driving record. So, if any of the tickets that show up on your driving record are tickets that you intended to dispute but did not, and you have not paid them, you can file applications to the court to register those tickets in late dispute.
If you do that, ICBC will reconsider the decision to prohibit your license, on the basis of the fact that the tickets are now in dispute and no longer reflected on your driving record. What this means is that you may not get suspended, but these applications are also very difficult to succeed in.
There is a very strict legal test that must be met and the time frame to do all of this is very short because you need to get the application in before the 21 day is up, so that you have a determination on the application before the expiration of the 21-day period, so that the driving prohibition isn’t triggered
while you’re waiting for decision from the court over whether or not to grant you a late dispute.
If you don’t want to be prohibited as a result of a notice of intent to prohibit, then the most important thing that you need to do is act fast and get legal
advice to ensure what the best course of conduct is to prevent you from losing your license.