Riding without a bell takes a toll
Cyclist faced big bill from city, risked losing her driver’s licence
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the Toronto Police cycling dragnets were out in force.
So it was that on a lovely April day in 2010, Randi Beers incurred a $110 ticket for not having a bike bell. Through time, human error and bureaucratic sclerosis, that fine would nearly double by 2015 and jeopardize her driver’s licence and credit rating.
She thinks her experience reveals a glitch in the justice system that may have affected others.
The trouble started in early spring, soon after Beers had hauled her bike out of storage.
“It was one of the first days that it was warm enough to just go for a joyride,” she said.
Pedalling southbound on Yonge St. near the Eaton Centre, she was stopped by a cluster of cops looking for springtime cycling scofflaws. “It was like, literally, a bike bell blitz,” Beers said. One officer dinged her with a $110 fine but said she could avoid paying if she showed a bell in court. So Beers went straight to Kensington Market, where she bought a “pink plaid number” from a cycling store, hoping to flaunt it for a judge, she recently wrote in NOW Magazine.
As the summer wore on, the whole incident slipped her mind. On Sept. 1, she moved from an apartment near Dundas and Bloor Sts. to another place nearby, and forgot to tell the courts.
It came as a bit of a shock, then, when she received a phone call from a collection agency in January, informing her that her debt was still alive and well; had grown, in fact. Beers now owed $185.
As it turned out, she had been convicted in absentia in 2011.
And since she had subsequently defaulted on her fine, City of Toronto Court Services had slapped two demerit points on her driver’s licence, which had also been suspended.
If she wanted to challenge the ruling, a court clerk told her, she would have to do so in person.
That would have been OK, except that Beers now lives in the Northwest Territories, where she edits a weekly newspaper.
So she paid the fine and fixed the issues with her licence. “As far as I’m concerned, I should be totally kosher with MTO,” Beers said.
But she’s frustrated that no one associated with the courts could tell her how the unpaid fine would affect her credit rating.
“That really upset me,” she said, “that the court system can do something that will cause consequences but not know or be able to speak to what the consequences will be.”
She also realizes that she should have ensured the court had her address back in 2010.
Part of her lesson, however, remains unlearned.
Her bike in Yellowknife, which she can only use for three months a year, does not have a bell. She laughs at this. “I don’t know if you have to have a bike bell in N.W.T.”