Vehicular Negligence: A Socio-legal Study of Crime, Law and Public Safety

Abstract

The author approaches the study of vehicular homicide from a life history perspective that incorporates her autoethnography. She use both oral histories and discourse analysis to see how legal language perception and whether public perception impacts police and judicial practice; with specific emphasis placed on motor vehicle incidents that encompass a criminal component of injury and or fatality. Much of the literature in this area is very narrow as it focuses on the consequences of drunk driving as it relates to the mismanagement of vehicles and the subsequent legal and civil litigations. She synthesizes a variety of disciplinary approaches including socio-legal studies, linguistic analysis, the psychology of trauma, formal law, police studies and political studies. Her research illustrates a complex understanding of crime and law that breaks free from the confines of legality and incorporates an exciting, relatively new approach to harm based on language and public perception and that has important policy directives.