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- Title
RECKLESS DRIVING -- IS IT A DISTINGUISHABLE OFFENSE?
- Authors
Reuben, Don H.
- Abstract
The article analyses U.S. laws as applicable to cases of reckless driving. The statutes found in the several states are unsatisfactory. All statutes are, and should be, aimed at a similar course of conduct--driving in a manner which is recognizable by a reasonable man as highly dangerous. But not one of the statutes in force specifically states this. The Uniform Act speaks in terms of "willfulness and wantonness," resulting in difficulties in determining what course of action is meant. The result is to force reliance on the tangled common law meaning of these words. The same interpretive problem is found in states following the "due circumspection" concept. The net result is that traffic officers cannot look to the statute to determine what offenses are there included. What is needed is a clearer statute drafted along the following lines: reckless driving is that driving which the ordinary driver can easily perceive will, under the circumstances, result in substantial danger to person or property, provided, however, that the danger must be to person or property other than that of the accused.
- Subjects
UNITED States; AUTOMOBILE driving; DISTRACTED driving; STATUTES; U.S. states; DANGER (Law); ACCIDENT law; CRIMINAL negligence
- Publication
Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (08852731), 1951, Vol 41, Issue 6, p788
- ISSN
0885-2731
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3491276