The main purpose of this dissertation is to clarify the issue of Dangerous Driving Causing Death or Injury in Taiwan (Art. 185-3(2) of the Criminal Code) and Japan (Act on Punishment of Acts Inflicting Injury or Death on Other(s) by Driving a Vehicle §2). In 2000s, the purpose on legislation with regard to this crime was in response to the public opinions about severely punishment in terms of “Mean Driving”, regardless of Taiwan or Japan. However, in order to reach the social expectation, the end result of this crime bill were considered to be inappropriate. This controversial issues could be stated in two significant figures.
First, the essence of Dangerous Driving act is absent of dangerous reality. Namely, in Taiwan, the legal requisites of dangerous driving (Art. 185-3(1) of the Criminal Code) are constituted on the basis of the 0.25mg/l BrAC or 0.05% BAC, rather than the state of being dangerous causing by driving while intoxicated. Similarly, in Japan, the legal constitutive requirements of this crime, which were used to define the dangerous driving actions are equivocal, hence, the interpretation of the behavior is prescribed by personal value judgement. Otherwise, the Dangerous Driving Causing Death or Injury in Japan is having doubts about criminal liability. Which means, it seems to be reckoned as an offense aggravated by results of a crime, nevertheless, dangerous driving is not deemed to be a distinct crime in the basic criminal act. Secondly, as regards the application of causation, it could be explained in certain formalized ways. Especially, we could see the cases about the harmful consequences are caused by driving mistakes which might be lack of relevance in dangerous driving behaviors according to the legislative instructions, but still are accused guilty on the court, whether in Taiwan and Japan.
Overall, we could address that the worst problem of interpretation and application in this crime at judicial adjudication is to ignore the nature of endangerment, and the judgement of causation would be in mere form. Furthermore, the constitutive requirements of this crime is not in accordance with the seriousness of behavior, but an act of against traffic regulations. Consequently, the objective dangerousness of this crime would be hollowed out, just like a normal car accident event.
To figure out the dilemma, I would illustrate the issue with interpretation and application by means of analysis with theories and cases, based on the essential of aggravated resulting crime in criminal danger (Chapter 2). In addition, by clarifying the concept of the aggravated resulting crime and offense of abstract endangerment in terms of causation, the structure of judgement on dangerous to public safety toward individual can be shown accordingly (Chapter 3). In that way, I suggest a feasible approach to interpret this crime from the perspective of dangerous to public safety, which can be used to restrict the boundary of the application of this crime, in Taiwan and Japan (Chapter 4).