Mayoral candidate Mandeep Sidhu was in territorial court Tuesday on charges of careless driving and stunting.

The charges, laid under the territorial Motor Vehicles Act, stem from a July 12 incident.

Whitehorse RCMP Const. Mitchell Hutton testified he was doing a roadside check that night.

He pulled over a vehicle going up Two Mile Hill, but the driver stopped in the left lane closest to the centre line.

Hutton explained on the stand the driver was young and apparently wasn’t aware he had to pull into the right lane.

At around midnight, Hutton testified, he was walking back towards his cruiser when he heard honking. He saw a pickup truck drive within one foot of his cruiser then accelerate up the hill.

There were three to four lanes open on that portion of the road, he said.

Hutton was on the far right, and the vehicle that passed him was in the adjacent lane.

The officer testified he estimated the vehicle was going at about 100 to 120 km/h, and then accelerated to 120 or 130 km/h after passing him.

Two Mile Hill is a 60 km/h zone.

Hutton said he couldn’t catch up to the vehicle but identified it as being Sidhu’s pickup truck.

On July 10, as he was in a marked police vehicle, Hutton testified he saw Sidhu drive, stick his hand out the window and give him the finger.

He said he also recognized the vehicle because it was partially painted, the centre part of the truck being brown and the rest white.

Finally, Hutton said, he had seen the truck parked outside Sidhu’s Fourth Avenue laundromat moments before the roadside check.

Sidhu doesn’t contest he was the one driving there that night.

But the speed he was driving at was nowhere near what the officer said, he testified.

He checked multiple times his speedometer, fearing another officer could be checking speed, making sure he was under the speed limit.

He didn’t expect a stopped police cruiser in the right lane and had to change lanes at the last minute.

He first saw the cruiser with his flashing lights from the bottom of Two Mile Hill.

He explained he honked out of frustration and surprise when realizing the police cruiser was in the left lane.

There were no other vehicles on the road, Sidhu said.

“Did you ever think I was trying to save your life by not hitting you?” Sidhu asked Hutton.

Judge Peter Chisholm told Sidhu he couldn’t ask a witness what he might have thought of his action at the time.

Sidhu presented a picture of his car taken a year before the incident, and a video of himself driving another car a couple days after the incident, taking the same route he did on July 12.

Using the picture, Sidhu pointed out he had installed a cold air intake on his truck.

This made accelerating a lot noisier, he told the judge, which could explain why the police officer thought he was speeding, he said.

In the video, a visibly-upset Sidhu explains the street lights were broken on that section of Two Mile Hill. On the stand, he testified the lights still haven’t been fixed.

“The entire time, I thought he was in the right lane,” he said about the police cruiser.

Sidhu also argued Const. Hutton had animosity toward him while he was cross-examining the officer.

Sidhu said Hutton has charged him seven times in the past years, including once in Watson Lake for using a cellphone while driving.

Sidhu was cleared on appeal and doesn’t have a criminal record.

Crown prosecutor Kimberly Sova told the judge the police mistakenly identified an iPod as a phone in that case, and after a review of evidence, the Crown conceded the case.

Sidhu is also currently involved in a civil lawsuit against seven RCMP officers.

The lawsuit hasn’t gone to trial yet.

“I hit the throttle and avoided an accident,” Sidhu said in his final submission, adding he was glad the officer was safe.

Asked to comment after Tuesday’s proceedings, Sidhu told the Star he would wait for the judge’s decision.

Chisholm is set to rule on the matter next week.