Driver says Alberta sheriff left her stranded on highway due to expired licence, registration

Mary Edwards was driving to Lake Louise last month when an Alberta sheriff pulled her over on Highway 1 west of Banff because her vehicle's licence plate and her driver's licence were expired.

She was told she could not continue to drive until the corresponding fees were paid at a registry.

The 49-year-old Calgary woman says feelings of guilt and embarrassment soon turned to worry after the sheriff told her he was under no obligation to help her and she'd have to sort out her own problem.

"He said there's a registry in Banff, and there are taxi companies," said Edwards. "It was very, very stressful."

Edwards says she takes full responsibility for letting her licence and registration lapse. 

Her plate was up for renewal last August, her driver's licence in January. She says there was no excuse. She simply forgot. 

And she says she accepts the penalties: two tickets, each worth $324.

But she says she was taken back by the attitude of the peace officer issuing the tickets.

Other than parking her car at a trailhead lot a few hundred metres up the highway, he told her she couldn't drive anymore — otherwise, she risked getting another ticket, and she says he told her they were watching.  

She says the area had spotty cell service. She was alone. And she was under some time constraints.

The Banff registry closes at 2 p.m. on Saturdays, so she had about two hours to get there.

"You're kind of in a really terrible predicament of your own making, but it's still a terrible predicament to leave someone in," said Edwards.

She says she appealed to some strangers in the parking lot without any luck.

She then made several unsuccessful phone calls for rides, including one to a Banff cab company who said they were busy and couldn't get her to the registry in time.

She says she wound up having to hire a cab from Canmore to pick her up and drive her back to Banff. 

It cost her $250 — a costly ride she was willing to pay but says it's not one everyone could afford.

She says she then had a friend from Calgary come to Banff to pick her up and drive her back to her car.

"For me, the bigger picture is, would they do the same thing if there was no cell service? And if that's the case, then you're asking someone to break the law either by driving or by hitchhiking," said Edwards.

Some discretion

CBC News reached out to the department of Public Safety and Emergency Services, which oversees Alberta Sheriffs.

"The law affords officers a degree of discretion to handle non-criminal traffic offences in a variety of ways," a spokesperson said by email. "The Sheriff Highway Patrol acknowledges that officers in circumstances like this can consider a number of options when it's safe and appropriate to do so."

But in her case, Edwards says, she wasn't offered any helpful options.

A traffic sergeant with the Calgary Police Service says that depending on how long ago a motorist's licence or registration had expired, he's allowed an offender to drive to the nearest registry to renew them.

"Have I let people drive away? Yes, I have," said Sgt. Dylan Harris.

"Part of our discretion is why has this person not registered that vehicle?" 

He says that may include outstanding fines or sheer forgetfulness, especially since the mailout reminders ended several years ago for vehicle registrations. But, he says, there are still email reminders. 

Harris says discretion also means police can tow a vehicle if the vehicle registration is expired, or if the driver's licence is expired and there are no other valid drivers in the vehicle.

"I don't know the full details (but it seems) that officer in a way was kind of doing her a favour, I guess, in the respect of not towing her vehicle, which would then have gone to their impound lot. Then she would have had to deal with getting it out of there," said Harris.

Better solution

Edwards believes her situation could have turned out much worse, for other reasons.

She says thankfully she had been able to reach someone on her cellphone and it wasn't extremely cold out. 

She believes there has to be a better solution that would allow officers to work with absent-minded Albertans rather than stranding them.

Other than flexing their discretion, she wonders whether officers could issue a 24-hour licence and registration card to allow people to get to a registry to resolve these issues safely and less expensively.

She says she has since put her credit card on file with AMA to ensure at least her registration is automatically renewed.

And she says she's now become an advocate for reminding others to renew their paperwork.