Car Crime

Claire Corbett

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135988104
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Crime involving cars – whether involving offences by drivers or theft of and from cars – represents a substantial proportion of offences committed, and occupies an enormous amount of police time. But it is not always perceived as the serious crime that it is: many traffic offences cause enormous harm in terms of death and injury, but are often not regarded seriously by drivers, the criminal justice system and the state. Other than theft of and from cars it is arguable that car crime is socially constructed as 'not real crime' or 'not even crime'. This book is the first to survey the whole area of car crime. It considers car crime as a coherent whole, addressing the concept of car culture; considers car crime in its various guides in relation to issues such as masculinity, gender, car usage and the environment; considers the historical roots of legislation concerning crime committed in the car, through to current legislation and its effects and implications. The book also addresses issues of crime prevention, and in particular the role of car manufacturers in making cars more crime proof.

Chapter 1

Car culture and the construction of car crime

Our embeddedness within car culture

The last century saw everyday lives, global economies and national infrastructures constructed around motor cars and the culture they have spawned. Growing dependence on the car is fast enveloping most countries. In 1997 in Europe four-fifths of all land travel was undertaken by car,¹ and almost one private car was owned for every two citizens.² In 1998, over half (54 per cent) of the European population held driving licences.³ World traffic volumes are forecast to quadruple between 1990 and 2050 with the largest increases in developing countries (Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 1998). The world’s embeddedness in car culture looks certain. This has positive aspects, but negative ones are swiftly accumulating with alarming future global consequences.

The door-to-door convenience, ease of mobility, freedom and the supposed saving of time are generally seen as the greatest benefits of car usage (RAC 2000). Cars have been rated the second most popular item on people’s wish list of possessions⁴ and almost half of car-less young people want to own one more than anything else.⁵ Other surveys reinforce the chilling extent of our emotional dependence on private motorised transport. The British Crime Survey 2000 (Kershaw et al., 2000)⁶ found that more car-theft victims were ‘very much’ affected than people who reported a violent incident, and most car owners believe that having a car was essential to their lives and being without would be disastrous (Lex 1999: 16–17). Cars for some are also linked with enhancing fun, thrills, excitement, status and image; hence the ceaseless interest in luxury, sports and performance cars which if not to own are to admire via glossy magazines or by watching Formula One races which can each attract 350 million global viewers (Hotten 1999).

Aside from their multiple positive uses, cars add considerably to levels of environmental pollution. According to the Department of Health (1998), air pollution contributes to the early death of up to 24,000 Britons per year, and exhaust emissions are strongly linked with lung cancer, heart disease, bronchitis and asthma.^{7, 8} Traffic congestion causes huge financial loss to the national economy and great personal loss to drivers (RAC 2000), and lack of exercise, frustration and stress from driving, and back pain caused by poorly fitting car seats, deplete drivers’ health (e.g. Porter 1999).

Perhaps the most disquieting product of car culture, however, is the huge worldwide crash death toll. In 1999, almost 46,000 were killed in road collisions in Europe, around 42,000 in the USA and 10,000 in Japan (DTLR 2001c: Table 8.7); global fatalities were estimated to have reached 880,000 and were set to rise, with 85 per cent of these occurring in developing countries where few own vehicles (Jacobs et al. 2000). Moreover, up to 34 million worldwide are estimated to be injured in road collisions annually costing in excess of US$500 billion (ibid.), and it has been calculated that road deaths will constitute the world’s third biggest killer by 2020. They are currently the main cause of death for 15–24-year-olds (Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 1998).

The challenge for international governments is how best to harmonise the competing interests of car culture – meeting the demands for more roads to facilitate safe, smooth and swift vehicle movement while simultaneously reducing the negative environmental consequences. Governments must appease polarised lobbying groups, road safety organisations, motor manufacturing groups, pedestrian and cycling associations and the driving public – and retain the electorate’s support. Accommodating the opposing interests of all constituencies has so far proved elusive, and the formulation of comprehensive and coherent policies to encompass the demands and products of car usage looks set to be an ongoing dilemma.

The other long-standing challenge of car culture is deciding how best to regulate road usage and control car-related behaviours to minimise the likelihood of harmful consequences while maximising the benefits associated with car use. The problem is that road users rarely comply with the raft of laws designed to determine the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour – so much ‘car crime’ occurs.

While, as we shall see, definitions of what constitutes car crime are far from straightforward, if the term encompasses road traffic offending – as will be argued here – it would be unwise to dismiss such crime as unimportant. Some road traffic offences are associated with crash involvement (e.g. Forsyth and Silcock 1987; Junger 1994; Junger et al. 2001), and with mainstream crime (e.g. Tillman and Hobbs 1949; Willett 1964; Sorenson 1994; Rose 2000; Soothill et al. 2002). Indeed, such correlations have led to suggestions of a common aetiology between crash involvement and offending on and off the road; this may have implications for the co-ordination of future health, road safety and crime control policies as some of the same individuals could be the focus of each policy (Junger et al. 1995). These connections underline the importance of exploring further the nature of ‘car crime’ which forms one impetus for this text. Others follow.

Why a book on car crime?

Few texts bring together the breadth of car-related offending covered in this book. Driving is one of the most common and frequent behaviours undertaken by adults in motorised societies, and a significant proportion of it is illegal since few drivers in Britain deny ever breaching traffic laws (Corbett and Simon 1992a), and at least most admit to exceeding speed limits (e.g. Lex, 1997). Many offending behaviours are easily observable, and the lack of stigma attached increases their transparency, and yet relatively little has been written about them by criminologists. Most such offences have national and international applicability; for instance, theft of and from a vehicle are two of the most common forms of global theft (Barclay et al. 2001: Tables 1.3., 1.4, 1.5). Moreover, car-related offending is highly topical in view of society’s increasing reliance on this means of transport, and a mushrooming media focus indicates that the public is increasingly receptive to debates on car usage, car crime and car culture. Indeed, in view of the high volume of prosecutions for offences connected with road traffic law, people are more likely to come to the attention of police in relation to road traffic matters than in any other way (Department of Transport and Home Office 1988: 30).

Despite offences connected with the car and driving causing tremendous harm, it is particularly interesting that vehicle-related offences generally, and many illegal driving actions specifically, appear not to have been taken seriously by governments aside from occasional rhetoric to the contrary, and neither are they accorded much gravity by society and individual drivers. In fact, in many respects vehicle-related crime is hardly treated as ‘real’ crime.

Criminologists outside the establishment have largely shied away from an exploration of car crime, and most research has been internally or externally commissioned by the Home Office and the Department for Transport (DfT), which was formerly the DTLR (Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions), the DETR (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions), and the DoT (Department of Transport). Not surprisingly Home Office focus has tended to centre on aspects of vehicle theft offences (e.g. Webb and Laycock 1992), although a few critical contributions on this topic have been ventured by other criminologists (e.g. Groombridge 1994, 1998). Interestingly, Bottoms (1999) thought we might look back on the twentieth century and wonder why car crime was so roundly eschewed by the criminological fraternity which, given the centrality of cars in our lives and a sharpening media focus on car-related matters, is indeed surprising. Perhaps apathy has arisen either because the concerns of car crime are perceived as too distinct and different from mainstream crime, or because it is not generally seen as true crime by criminologists, or because of the influence of powerful vested interests, as Mannheim (1960) ventured.⁹ Contributions to a disparate literature have come from other disciplines – from psychologists, geographers, economists and transport scientists – and these will be drawn upon as appropriate. Use too will be made of news media reportage as a prime channel of communication about car crime to the public.

The context here is largely British. However, many issues will be recognised outside the UK, where similar debates are unfolding, and nearly all offences involving the car are worldwide occurrences. Moreover, the range of research studies discussed will have an international flavour as British criminological research into car-related offences is limited.

What is car crime?

The term ‘car crime’ is in common usage but is rarely followed by a description or definition of what is meant, a shared understanding of the term being assumed although this is not necessarily the case. The category most likely to conjure up the image of ‘car crime’ is almost certainly when vehicles, their contents or parts become the subject of theft. Such offences are subsumed under the theft laws and together constitute almost one fifth of both officially recorded and self-reported crimes (see Chapter 4). Yet offences involving vehicles and driving cover a far wider terrain. Vehicles are used in the commission of crimes like drug trafficking, smuggling, abduction, burglary and robbery (as ‘getaway cars’). In a peripheral sense at least, such offences could be deemed car crimes, as could be cases of ‘motor manslaughter’, prosecuted under criminal law, where vehicles are used as weapons of assault.

Probably the main expansion to an understanding of car crime would be to encompass all those offences that relate to road traffic law. The number of these created by statute in Britain is vast and including those hidden away in subordinate legislation of regulations and orders – much of which has been amended and extended – probably runs to thousands (Gibson 1994). Road traffic law governs road usage and the operation and enforcement of legislation by police and courts, and offences are of several kinds. The main group relates to standards of driving which fall short of the minimum demanded by law, and others include the construction and use of vehicles such as braking, tyre, weight and lighting requirements, and vehicle document and driver licensing offences.

Strictly speaking all offences under road traffic law are crimes as this is an integral though separate part of the criminal law. Yet despite overlapping features of criminal and road traffic law, the perception persists that traffic crime is qualitatively different (e.g. Department of Transport and Home Office 1988: 20). Certainly acts associated with driving and vehicle use that have the potential to cause harm but which do not do so on each occasion are defined as crime under road traffic law which is not often the case under general criminal law, and in general the former aims to avoid collisions rather than to embody moral principle (ibid.). In addition, many ‘crimes’ on the road comprise a failure to act as or when expected, or are the result of momentary inattention, and some people think this reduces their seriousness, irrespective of the consequences, and means that they are not real crimes. This discourse is bound up with the complex legal principle of intention which is considered in Chapter 3.

Whatever the legal arguments, it would be short-sighted to accept that crimes on or off the road are simply what the law says they are, and criminologists and lawyers are well versed in the competing definitions of what crime is and how it is social constructed, such that only some acts become labelled as crime while other equally or more heinous acts fail to be so defined (e.g. Croall 1998a; Muncie and McLaughlin 2001). For instance, emphasis in the compilation of criminal statistics on ‘street’ crimes at the expense of ‘suite’ crimes is frequently critiqued in criminological texts to illustrate how the elite have used constructions of the law to serve their best interests. Thus de Haan (1991: 207) claims that crime is ideologically constructed and ‘serves to maintain political power relations, justifies inequality and serves to distract public attention from more serious problems and injustices’.

Such views are often discussed in relation to corporate crime and crimes of the elite where it is pointed out (e.g. Croall 1998a: 270) that dubious business activities are rarely defined as criminal offences and instead tend to be cast as ‘problems’, ‘wrongdoings’, ‘violations’ or ‘breaches’. Such ‘irregularities’ tend not to be enforced by the police but by other agencies whose role may be to encourage compliance with regulations or to provide advice, and prosecution is seen very much as a last resort (ibid.), which if successful tends to attract lenient treatment (ibid.: 272). So ‘regulation’ rather than recourse to the criminal law has been the dominant model for business crime. Similar arguments can be made with respect to questionable commercial activities linked with vehicle usage, such as discussed in Croall (1998b, 2001).

Critical criminologists commonly highlight the practices of rulemakers (institutions and corporations wielding power and influence) rather than individual rulebreakers (e.g. Scraton and Chadwick 1991: 161–87). In this regard, the activities of motor manufacturers, businesses using fleet cars, government departments, government agencies and politicians are worth scrutiny when considering behaviours under the broad heading of car crime (see Chapter 9). As examples, in 2000 a thirty-year cover-up of vehicle defects such as dangerous brake fittings was admitted by a prominent motor manufacturer (Guardian 30.8.00: 26); in the same year a parliamentary report blamed the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for failing to deal adequately with unscrupulous car dealers who sell unroadworthy vehicles.¹⁰ These vehicles were described in another official report as ‘coffins on wheels’ that could be a factor in up to 360 deaths annually (Allen 1999).

Other behaviours that might be perceived as car crime are problematic to measure. For instance, knowingly driving while very tired is common (see Chapter 5) and might be thought of as foolhardy and irresponsible given the raised risk of falling asleep and causing a crash, yet at present legislation would be impractical as well as impossible. Crashes with tiredness as a principal cause can be prosecuted under the catch-all categories of careless or dangerous driving laws, but therein lose their reference to the physical condition of the driver. Eyesight is measurable and usually worsens with age and up to 1 in 10 ‘would fail the standard driving test if retaken today’ (...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Table of cases
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1 Car culture and the construction of car crime
• 2 The car in historical context
• 3 Not real crime?
• 4 ‘Car crime’ as theft of and from a vehicle
• 5 Impaired driving: alcohol, drugs and fatigue
• 6 Speeding
• 7 Bad driving: dangerous and careless offences
• 8 Unlicensed driving
• 9 Car crime in wider society
• 10 Past, present and future directions
• References
• Index