17 unlicensed drivers caught in an hour by OPP officer

There is an increasing amount of people driving in the nation’s capital without a valid licence, according to Constable Michael Fathi.

The Ontario Provincial Police officer, and media relations person for the Ottawa detachment, said that the Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) software in his cruiser was “going off non-stop” on Wednesday.

“In that one hour that I was sitting there (Highway 417 near Carling Avenue), 17 unlicensed drivers went by,” Fathi told CityNews in an interview.

This is not an uncommon occurrence.

On any given day that he’s out on the job, Fathi said he gets dozens of hits from the ALPR in a shift, an impossible task to pull over all the drivers in a day. And it is also completely avoidable, he said.

Officers using discretion

The reason for more unlicensed drivers is not because people are choosing to not renew their licence, Fathi said it’s because people are forgetting to update it online. In 2021, the province changed its requirement and did not send people reminders to update their licence and health card in the mail, something that needs to be done every five years.

“It’s not like people are necessarily doing it intentionally. It’s just simply that they don’t necessarily look at it,” Fathi said.

People can sign up on the Service Ontario website to get text and email reminders for their licence before it expires.

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Officers are trying to be kind to people knowing they can take less than five minutes to do it.

“We will have them renew their licence on the side of the road. Because otherwise, they can’t even drive away from there,” he said.

Those caught with an expired licence could land a $325 ticket for fail to surrender licence. Fathi said officers in the nation’s capital are trying to be mindful that if people update their licence on the side of the road they often reduce the ticket to $110.

“But at the end of the day you’re still responsible for your driver’s licence,” he said.

Many drivers without a valid licence

However, police are getting more creative and in turn making sure drivers are aware of their lack of licence.

Several weeks ago a truck lost its drive shaft on Highway 417 causing damage to eight vehicles and a huge traffic jam on the roadway. The two-hour delay happened around 2:00 p.m. on Feb. 26 and saw multiple officers respond to the scene.

One of those personnel was Fathi who with another officer tag teamed an enforcement operation as vehicles passed by.

“I was doing traffic control and one of my other partners was situated a little further up (the road),” he said. “So as drivers came by that were unlicensed I just let him know and so he stopped them.”

Fathi said that over a dozen vehicles came up in the ALPR as unlicensed, and the team were able to stop four. Part of the reason not all the drivers were stopped could have been because the person driving was not the owner of the vehicle.

“A lot of the times what we tend to do is try to confirm it on the MTO website prior to stopping the vehicle and you can see the picture of the registered owner of the vehicle,” he said. “So, you can drive next to the vehicle and see if it’s actually the registered owner driving or somebody else.”

In the case it’s not the owner Fathi said officers don’t typically pull them over because they aren’t the ones with the expired licence.

Police are imploring people to check their licence before getting behind the wheel.