Court Opinion

ID: 9549487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:19:26.761212+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:23.530674
License: Public Domain

Finley, C. J.
(dissenting)—Considering the shocking significance of currently mounting fatality and other highway *770accident statistics, there is little doubt in my mind that highway traffic safety is the number one social problem of our times.1 The automobile, is, incongruously, both a boon and a behemoth in our contemporary culture. Whether it is more of the one or the other is dependent upon its use by its variegated users, as well as upon appropriate social control and regulation promulgated by organized society relative to such uses and users. If the automobile is not regarded as aforementioned, it should be—not only by the motoring public but by all public officials vested with any responsibility and authority having to do with highway traffic safety. With these points of reference in mind, it should be noted that the legislature, under the police power of the state, is vested with authority which could be well nigh plenary and should be so recognized- judicially. Thus I have no problem agreeing with the majority that the legislature has the police power, and has duly exercised it, to proscribe as criminal three categories of conduct in an effort to regulate and control the presently well-nigh uncontrollable destruction of life, limb, and property on the highways of this state. Two dissenting opinions in this appeal seem to me to indulge in something akin to two intellectual tempests in somewhat separate teapots as to whether it is legislatively, legalistically, or conceptually possible to es*771tablish more than just two, namely three, categories of conduct as penal and beyond the pale for social acceptance. This, of course, is speaking of social acceptance in terms of the use of the automobile and the network of highways constructed with great engineering skill and at great public expense potentially for the safe use-utility and enjoyment of the motoring public.
The statute involved in this case is no different from numerous others as to which this court has been called upon to supply some reasonable and rational explanation by way of judicial interpretation. It seems apparent to me that the statute attempts to list in the disjunctive three different categories of conduct on the highways as subject to firm, if not drastic, penalization. The problem in this case is simply one of definition or of distinguishing with reasonable and rational clarity between category two (driving in a reckless manner), and category three (driving with disregard for the safety of others). I am convinced that the key to the problem lies perhaps very simply in some legalistic conceptualism which, for lack of better nomenclature, I would refer to as (a) volitional recklessness, and (b) involitional recklessness.
Putting it another way, the third category simply proscribes any course of conduct involving such a convincing or high probability of danger to other users of the highway as to be in disregard for the safety of others both in fact and in law i.e., conduct which is criminal per se.
The basic defect in the majority opinion, and one I cannot accept and live with in good conscience, lies in its failure or refusal to employ, and I may say quite traditionally and appropriately, judicial interpretation and explanation as to the third category posed by the legislature in the statute.
In my judgment, the third category envisaged herein, i.e., the “criminal per se” category, is not simply a more or a less stringent version of the second category, involving recklessness. The recklessness category focuses on the intent of a driver rather than on the circumstances of a *772resulting accident. A driver could be convicted of negligent homicide if his testimony or that of other witnesses indicate criminal intent in relation to recklessness. On the other hand, the criminal per se category focuses on the fact pattern or circumstances of an accident. A driver could be convicted of negligent homicide even though there is no evidence available concerning his intent, provided his conduct or actions clearly indicate criminal negligence. There is, of course, a close similarity between this conduct category and the first conduct category proscribed by the statute, namely driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor or narcotic drugs, as to which intent—realistically—is at least somewhat irrelevant.
Following the foregoing resolution of one crucial problem in this case, the focus must then fix upon the corollary matter of instructions given, or not given, by the trial court. In this respect, it is my view that instruction No. 6, as given, was grossly inadequate. Simply saying that the words of the statute “mean just what they say” was, I think, utterly meaningless and an exercise in judicial futility of no utility or guidance whatsoever to the jury confronted with the problem of making a decision in this case. By the same token, the instruction, meaningless as I think it was, either disregarded or overlooked completely any and all rights of the defendant—I might say improperly if not unconstitutionally so. The defendant’s requested instruction No. 6 was little—if any—better than instruction No. 6 as actually given by the trial court. I am convinced that a new trial should be granted; and in my best judgment, a new instruction could and should be given legally, appropriately, and constitutionally consistent with the function of this appellate court along the lines expressed hereinbefore as to the third category posed in the statute by the legislature.
For the reasons stated above, I dissent.

Some statistics gathered by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Traffic Court Program can be summarized as follows: Of the 200 million people living in the United States, 102 million are licensed drivers. There are 96,100,000 motor vehicle registrations. Every year there are 53,000 deaths and 1,900,000 disabling injuries as a result of automobile accidents. The American Bar Association’s preliminary estimate is that these accidents cost $10 billion per year. A recent American Bar Association brochure makes the following comment:
The National Highway Safety Bureau has said that auto crashes are close to being the nation’s largest health problem. “The present casualty rates listed in the National Health Survey show that highway crashes cause 10,000 injuries each day, 1,000 deaths each week, and at least one billion dollars in property damages each month,” according to a NHSB spokesman. The Bureau has pointed out that vehicle crashes account for eight million bed days a year in hospitals and that auto collisions are the leading cause of death for teenagers and young adult males today.