Ontario’s flying-wheel law struck down

SUDBURY, Ont. (Sept. 3, 1999) — A lower court judge has struck down an Ontario law that makes wheel separations an absolute-liability offence.

Ruling on a case against a school bus operator, a Sudbury court said the province’s Wheel Safety Act, passed in 1997, is unconstitutional because it punishes the vehicle’s owner/operator for the offence regardless of who is actually at fault. The law requires an automatic fine of $2000 to $50,000 to be paid by the vehicle’s owner and/or operator.

Absolute liability is generally reserved for minor offences, which are punishable by minor penalty. In the case of a wheel separation, the only defence against the charge is to prove the wheel did not, in fact, come off. Due diligence is not a defence.

“You cannot in a democratic society simply deem someone to be guilty of an offence whether they were at fault or not,” said Ontario Trucking Association president David Bradley. “Nor can you deprive someone of their right to launch a due diligence defence, which is what the wheel-separation law attempted to do.”

The OTA has argued that wheel separations tend to result from a combination of factors related to the vehicle’s operator, maintenance history, and equipment specification, among others. Yet the law punishes the most convenient victim, rather than addressing thoughtlessness or inefficiency on the part of the true culprit, if any.