It seemed like such a simple question.  After all, the letter that I received was very brief.  It read as follows:

Dear Mr. Charness,

Please help us settle the question that came up during coffee break at work.

Is it illegal to drive through a shopping mall parking lot in order to avoid a congested intersection?  This is of course under the condition that no traffic laws were violated while driving in the parking lot, all stop signs, speed limits and driving lanes are observed, and that there is no sign prohibiting through traffic.

We all agree that this is "cheating", as in jumping the line, but is it illegal?  And if it is, which law applies in this situation?

Thanks for a very useful column!

Yours sincerely

I O

In the first place, it's nice to know that my column forms the topic of water cooler and coffee break discussions at work.  In the second place, I do recall from years back hearing that it was illegal to cut through a gas station to avoid a red light.  But where exactly it would say such a thing was hard to pin down.

I assumed that the answer would be found in the Highway Safety Act or else in a municipal regulation.  If it was in the Act, the index should lead me in the right direction if I could figure out what subtopic I was looking for.  If it was a municipal regulation I would be pretty much out of luck as the search would be long and tedious.

I decided to take the easy way out and call my friend Sergeant McGrath who is one of the sergeants in charge of the new Montréal traffic squadron figuring that he would know where to look.  Of course he did.

He directed me to section 312 of the Highway Safety Act which reads as follows: "No person may drive on private property in order to avoid conforming to a traffic sign or signal."

This one line rule led us into 20 minutes of debate as to how it would likely be interpreted in traffic court.  It was here that his cop training and my legal training obviously lead to different outlooks.

While we both agreed that this rule would make it illegal to cut through a gas station in order to avoid a red light or even a stop sign, we were divided as to how it would apply to our readers’ question.

In this case, we are not talking about cutting a corner, but rather driving through an entire shopping mall parking lot.  Once again, we were in agreement that a corner or an entire parking lot would constitute private property in terms of this law.

The real difference of opinion occurred when we began to discuss the congestion issue.  He was of the opinion that since the congestion was likely caused by a traffic light or traffic sign somewhere along the way this law would apply.  I disagreed and said that a defense could be mounted by claiming that congestion was a result of more vehicles than the capacity of the road system and that no traffic signals or signs were necessarily involved or being avoided and therefore there was no infraction of the law.

There's not a whole lot of jurisprudence on this law and absolutely none that I could find on exactly this point.  In one case, the judge ruled that you don't even have to have any intent to bypass a light or a sign to be found guilty.  Merely cutting the corner will be sufficient to be ticketed.  On the other hand the same judge ruled that entering a service station and finding all the pumps busy and then leaving by another exit and cutting the corner would not be an infraction of this rule.

Another judge decided that a driver who had bypassed a sign that was some 2000 feet a way in order to enter into the parking lot of a tavern across the way did not commit an infraction.  The defendant was acquitted based on the trajectory utilized, the interest and the benefit drawn by the defendant by his move as well as the nature of the sign and the distance between the sign and the part of the private property that was used by the defendant.

That's why the legal system requires police officers, defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges in order to figure out what exactly a law means.  What would your interpretation be?