Malicious driving causing death deserves strict legal punishment

OUTRAGEOUS acts on highways must be punished by applying the law controlling dangerous driving resulting in death or injury. This strong feeling of lay judges is reflected in a recent court ruling.

In a lay-judge trial on an incident in which a couple were killed after being the targets of aggressive driving on the Tomei Expressway in Kanagawa Prefecture in June last year, the Yokohama District Court has sentenced the perpetrator to 18 years in prison.

The court found him guilty of dangerous driving causing death or injury, a crime whose establishment was a point of contention in the case.

Behind the wheel of his car, the man repeated four times the act of cutting in ahead of a van carrying a family of four and then reducing his speed suddenly, a typical case of aggressive driving. The accused overtook the van and forced it to stop in a passing lane and also committed an assault on them. Immediately after this, a large truck collided with the couple and their vehicle from behind.

The court pointed out that the accident occurred as a result of the defendant’s driving in a way that interfered with other vehicles, his stopping the couple’s vehicle and his assault on the couple.

It makes sense that the court regarded the defendant’s acts, from aggressive driving to assault, as a chain of events resulting in the fatal accident.

The man got angry as he was admonished by the husband of the couple over the way he parked his car in a parking area. The court had every reason to criticise the defendant in its ruling as having “committed a short-tempered crime due to his egoistic and self- centred motive of stopping the car and making complaints.”

The crime of dangerous driving causing death or injury is assumed to apply to acts committed while driving. More than a few observers had expressed the view that it would be difficult to apply the crime to the accident in this case. The defence side had insisted the accused was not guilty of this crime, arguing that the crime “cannot apply to an incident that happened following the stoppage of the vehicle.”

If the defence, which had sought a lighter punishment, appeals the case, the applicability of the criminal penalty will become a point of contention again in high court hearings.

The criminal penalty for dangerous driving resulting in death or injury was established in 2001 in the wake of an accident in which a truck driven by a drunk driver struck a passenger car on the Tomei Expressway from behind, killing two female infants.

The statutory penalty ceiling, which was initially set at 15 years in prison, has been raised to 20 years’ imprisonment. The range of the crime’s application has been expanded, too.

Despite this, hurdles are still high to apply the criminal penalty. There is an opinion that stopping cars on expressways per se should be subject to punishment because it is a technique also used in acts of terrorism. The view is worth considering.

Aggressive driving is rampant across the country. In the wake of the incident on which the recent ruling was handed down, an increasing number of vehicles have been equipped with drive recorders as drivers’ selfdefence awareness has become heightened.

The National Police Agency in January directed police stations across the country to intensify a crackdown on aggressive driving. The number of cases in which drivers were charged with violating the obligation to keep a safe distance from other cars had topped 10,000 as of the end of October. It is notable that there have been cases resulting in suspension of the driver’s license and punishment for the crime of assault.

Police are called on to make full use of all laws and ordinances available and such data as that captured by drive recorders to strictly deal with the malicious practice of aggressive driving. — Yomiuri Shimbun