Violence in the Road: The Crime of Vehicular Homicide

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Abstract
While social scientists have devoted considerable attention to the study of inter-personal violence, little is known about the patterns of imper sonal violence represented by vehicular homicides. This report presents a descriptive analysis of 119 vehicular homicides occurring in a large mid western city during a three-year period. In analyzing vehicular homicides from a criminological perspective an attempt was made to identify the ecological, demographic, social, and prior offense patterns of this form of violent death. The findings indicate that the sociological characteristics of vehicular homicide are nearly identical to those of other urban crimes of violence, that individuals with a prior history of criminal aggressivity constitute a significant proportion of vehicular homicide offenders, and that there is a strong positive relationship between traffic offenses and a history of criminal aggressivity. It is concluded that these findings sup port the hypothesis that the tendency toward aggressive behavior, charac teristic of a subculture of violence, influences the way an individual drives as well as his face-to face interactions.

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