Résumé
[a] Criminality takes many forms; a homicide may be defined as criminal activity, as would identitytheft—both acts are criminal, yet the responses garnered are quite different. What makes theresponse for these two acts different? Perhaps societal reaction and tolerance towards thesebehaviours. Why is it that popular socio-legal discourse takes the position that societal reaction isthe result of the information it receives? The focus of my research was to determine whetherlanguage affects perception and whether this impacts police and judicial practice. The focus wason the discourse of legal and popular language used to describe motor vehicle incidents thatencompass a criminal component of injury and or fatality. I examined the impact of terminologyon public and legal perception, as well as societal reactions and tolerance, which were theunderlying issues of examination. However, in order to understand reaction and tolerance, Ifound it important to study the factors that contributed towards public and legal perception. Themethod of analysis was to examine the terminology used to depict and deliver the news of suchincidents. For the purposes of this investigation vehicular negligence is defined as any act orbehaviour that contravenes the British Columbia Motor Vehicle Act or is a Criminal Code ofCanada offence related to the operation of a motor vehicle. Under the law, a negligent act doesnot require mens rea, which literally means to have a guilty mind. Therefore, in order to beconsidered guilty, a person does not necessarily need to have the mental culpability offorecasting or have the intention of inflicting harm. I restricted my area of focus to the region of British Columbia for two primary reasons.First, British Columbia has a higher than average injury and fatality rate resulting from motor vehicle incidents when compared to other provinces in Canada. Second, the area of focus waslimited to this province as the result of my direct personal experiences in this provincial context.The parameters of my case study, as indicated above, included only those incidents of vehicular negligence that resulted in bodily injury and or fatality. The form of negligence assessed was notrestricted to a specific type of act; rather it included any act that would be considered negligentbehaviour on the roads, including but not limited to, driving in excess of the posted speed limit, impaired driving, carelessness, hit and runs, and so forth. My interest was to examine the ways inwhich these acts are perceived and addressed in public (media) and legal (court) discourse.Focusing on five randomly selected cases involving vehicular negligence, thematic analysis offace-to-face interviews, discourse analysis, and autoethnography were the primarymethodologies used for the investigation.At present, there is no shortage of literature examining the cause and effect of specificbehaviours in relation to motor vehicle incidents. The shortcoming, however, is that the focus ofthe literature is primarily centred on the consequences of drunk driving as it relates to themismanagement of vehicles and the subsequent legal and civil litigations. Some of the literaturealso addresses social and health costs related to the severity of vehicle negligent incidents.However, there is a dearth of research examining the role of public and legal perceptions as theypertain to vehicular negligence and the impacts on the way in which vehicular negligent incidents are addressed within the courts.The results of this research indicated that terminology does in fact have an impact onperception, and thus negligent incidents on the roads should be referred using terms that are accurate descriptions. Terms such as accidents construe an incorrect understanding of theimplications from these types of acts that are a leading health and safety epidemic globally.