On The Comparison Of German Crime Of Dangerous Driving

In recent years, as China’s urbanization accelerates and motor vehicle ownership substantially rises, highway traffic mileage and motor vehicle amount witness continuous increase, while tragedies caused by dangerous driving behaviours, such as drunk driving and street racing, take place around us repeatedly.Frequent malignant traffic cases caused by dangerous driving behaviors badly jeopardize people’s lives and property safety. How to regulate the behaviors such as drunk driving and chasing or racing by vehicle constitutes major agenda to realize the function of criminal law to protect legal interests and prevent crimes. As far as to the reality, the Road Traffic Safety Law and other administrative laws and regulations impose lighter punishment on dangerous driving behaviors with relatively single penalty method, and thus cannot conduct effective punishment upon the dangerous driving behaviors, which fails to meet the need to contain dangerous driving behaviors seriously threatening public security. Hence, the Amendment (Ⅷ) to the Criminal Law adopted in May2011adds new stipulation of "dangerous driving crime" as follows:"persons who drive drunk a motor vehicle on roads, or chase or race by a motor vehicle on the roads, if the circumstances are flagrant, shall be sentenced to detention and fine concurrently ". The original intention of legislation of dangerous driving crime is to prevent the results of endangering public security, such as serious injury or death on people, and major public or private property losses. As one of the most notable new charges in amendment to the criminal law, the questions including classing dangerous driving into crime and imposing punishment on it, as well as coordination with other charges stipulated by criminal law arouse extensive discussions among academic circles and even all walks of life.As the representative countries of continental law system and leading country in terms of motor vehicle production and ownership, Germany establishes a set of mature system regarding to the legal regulation of dangerous driving behaviors. With amendment and improvement of more than half a century, the German criminal law has strengthened the prevention and punishment upon such behaviors in legal perspective by means like strengthening criminal and administrative responsibility of dangerous driving behaviors and increase security measures. In terms of the legal definition of dangerous driving behavior including drunk driving, Germany boasts the broader, more rigorous regulations than those in China. The legal regulations of the German law cooperate with each other, fully reflecting the preciseness and logicality. The legislative experience, punishment mechanism, incrimination standard of German criminal law in the aspect of dangerous driving behaviors is worth of learning and using for reference. To apply research methods of comparative law, dialectically absorb German legislative experience has important and practical significance for improvement of the legislation of dangerous driving crime as soon as possible and establishment of a more thoughtful criminal law theory system in China.The thesis contains five parts. The first part is introduction, mainly explaining the current situation of traffic accidents caused by dangerous driving in China and shortages in relevant legislation, and illustrating the necessity of adding dangerous driving crime in China. Meanwhile, it introduces the research status of German criminal law and indicates its important reference and significance upon dangerous driving crime legislation in China. The second part discusses the legislative principle for dangerous driving crime in both China and Germany, and respectively studies the influence of criminal law theory on dangerous driving crime legislation of these two countries. The third part mainly studies the exact makeup of dangerous driving crime in China and Germany, and compares the difference of legislation model of the two countries from constitutive requirements, law characteristic, criminal penalties, etc. The fourth part analyzes the related issues on legislation of the dangerous driving crime based on comparative research upon dangerous driving crime in the two countries, and put forward the corresponding suggestions in terms of the legal punishment facilities, charges expansion and perfection of law relationship coordination, etc. The fifth part summarizes the full text, indicating that it is of important significance to learn the experience of German legislation to improve dangerous driving crime legislation of China and it is widely hoped to build better criminal law system in response to dangerous driving crime.