Culpable Driving and Issues of Causation

This article considers the role of causation in British criminal law as it applies to vehicular homicide. The author outlines the legal rules for determining causation in criminal cases, noting the role of the jury in the perception of fairness. The author reviews some recent driving offenses involving death, as cases that illustrate situations involving issues of causation. In these offenses, notions of culpability and blameworthiness are intertwined with the concept of causation. The cases summarized featured initial collisions, which arose by careless driving, but then each collision created the circumstances for a further collision when then resulted in death. A final section includes a brief discussion of the wisdom of leaving emotional moral value judgments to a randomly selected jury.

• Record URL:
  http://vathek.org/doi/abs/10.1350/jcla.2012.76.5.797
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00220183
• Authors:
  • Cooper, Simon
• Publication Date: 2012-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 431-437
• Serial:
  • Journal of Criminal Law
  • Volume: 76
  • Issue Number: 5
  • Publisher: Vathek Publishing
  • ISSN: 0022-0183
  • EISSN: 1740-5580
  • Serial URL: http://www.vathek.com/jcl/contents.php

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Court decisions; Courts; Crash causes; Crashes; Crime victims; Crimes; Ethics; Jurisprudence and judicial processes; Laws; Legal factors; Secondary crashes; Vehicular homicide
• Subject Areas: Highways; Law; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01492188
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 24 2013 8:47PM