Well, I'm surely re-opening a can of worms here by replying to this thread, but this was a thread that was very relevant to a question at hand since I'm contemplating darkside (and yes, I read all 10 pages of the thread) so it only seemed logical vs starting a new one. But, it trailed off without any legal precedent, just lots of opinions on both sides of the fence.
My reply is a bit long, sorry, but here's my case.
Is there legal precedent yet on the legality issue? As was hashed out here, the regulations are fuzzy, and when it comes to fuzzy charges, a good defendant often wins unless the crown can prove a point through the fuzziness, which, based on my experience, they often cannot -
lets look at the recent effort to clarify the Ontario window tint laws as proof of that - the fuzzy wording of the law, by police officers own admissions, is leading to difficulties getting charges to stick. A quote from the tinted window article I linked to:
The present wording is very open for interpretation and is based on the subjectivity of an officers' observations. This can lead to difficulties in getting convictions in court."
The tire laws that people cited here are equally "open for interpretation", as was clearly mentioned by many people over the course of the thread, and accordingly, it seems to me that a determined defendant, armed with the right defence, could get the charge thrown out of court.
So, I suspect that if these sorts of charges were more commonplace (it seems this was an isolated incident, I cannot find any record, anywhere, of anyone in Ontario having been charged for this specific violation since), it would only take one person willing to fight the charge tooth and nail to get it tossed out, and accordingly, a precedent set. Muddying the waters further was the fact that there probably WAS a tire violation in this case specific to the fact the tire was rubbing, so the charge would probably have stuck on that technicality moreso than the darkside argument itself.
Now, my question is based on an experience of my own last fall where I got into a debate with Canadian Tire, and subsequently the MTO about putting LT (light truck) tires on my horse trailer instead of the ST ("special trailer") defined tire. Despite being armed with a decade of experience to the contrary (read on...) one Canadian Tire mechanic swore up and down that it was illegal, unsafe, stupid, and all sorts of other things, going so far as to refuse to do the job until I pushed the issue with the store manager and he ordered another employee to swap the rubber for me.
A call to the MTO yielded mixed results - one officer sided with the Canadian Tire mechanic, another said he didn't know, a few others said it was fine so long as the tire fit the rim safely and properly, was not placarded "not for highway use", and was rated for the weights placed upon it by the axle and GVWR ratings. This is stuff that
IS clearly laid out in the tire laws that many people have linked to in this thread. The LT's I installed were good on all fronts, legally fitting the description as per the law, and they have served me well over many thousands of kilometers towing the trailer loaded heavy with draft horses. I also had LT's installed on my 5th wheel travel trailer which we travelled coast to coast with and probably put 50K on the LT's before we sold the trailer. MILLIONS of other RV'ers also do the same when it comes time to buy new rubber.
Further to the argument, many RV manufacturers are now shipping RV's with the much more robust and far superior LT options on them..right from the factory.
In the RV community many of the same arguments were made over the years, with many of the same heated discussions happening. The ST zealots swore up and down that people installing truck tires on their trailers were crazy suicidal idiots with no sensibilities. "The tires are built differently!" was much of the same argument. Yes, they are, but that doesn't automatically mean that choosing LT's was inherently unsafe.
A decade later, particularly when RV manufacturers also seen the light and decided that the
notoriously problematic ST tires weren't worth the hassles anymore and started shipping their own products with the very LT tires that some had cursed for years as "dangerous", along with the fact that 10 years of growing evidence across tens of millions of miles proved them wrong, the controversy died down to all but a whimper now. The arguments were dead in the water...but the facts have taken time to filter down to the zealot crowd, many of whom are not willing to admit there's a veritable mountain of factual evidence, and now even trailer AND tire manufacturer data (and legal precedent, people have fought it in court and won) that dismisses that dismisses their viewpoints as invalid.
It seems to me that the darkside motorcycle debate is still in the formative stages of that same debate, however, when you look at the facts, it seems that the debate
against them is losing - darkside has been a thing for a LONG time now, coming up on 2 decades since people started experimenting, and a good slid decade in
fairly mainstream use. There is a
mountain of evidence that those running darkside experience almost entirely positive results with none of the suggested issues (no, the sidewalls don't wear out prematurely, suffer sudden blowouts at rates anything higher than a traditional motorcycle tire, etc), and
a distinct lack of evidence reinforcing much of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that the anti-darkside crowd like to cite.
So, without reigniting the for vs against argument (I know, good luck with that), I'd like to ask for anyone's recent LEGAL evidence (and court followup) with regard to the issue.
It seems to me, based on Googling, that charges for darksiding are incredibly rare, and as I cited earlier in my reply, I think it would be difficult if not impossible for the crown to make the charge stick based on the current wording of the law, so long as the person charged actively fought the charge...and I suspect that's why we're not seeing the charges laid routinely - as someone else mentioned early on in the thread, the police could wander through any big motorcycle gathering and issue countless tickets for darkside...but they don't, do they? Something they know, perhaps?
