The sociological causes of traffic offences and their situation in the context of sociological theories of crime

The purpose of this study is to discuss the place of traffic offenses in the sociological theories of crime and to examine the sociological reasons underlying traffic offenses. The study is based on data collected from a field research conducted in Eskisehir between the years of 2013-2014. Following quantitative method, the research data were collected through 300 questionnaires, resolved with the help of SPSS and were supported by 12 semi-structured interviews. During the research, some questions were asked to participants, in order to find out the impact of variables such as gender, age, education, occupation, income and also the fact of being a driver or pedestrian on participants views about traffic accident and traffic offences. For this purpose, opinions about the causes and solutions of traffic accidents and traffic offences of those participants who themselves or their relatives have had traffic accidents and those who had not had any traffic accident were compared. Sociological causes of traffic offenses in this study are grouped under four main headings. These are; the global and local consequences which are caused by asynchronous development of material and non-material elements of modern world, the absence of a cultural memory in relation to traffic accidents, the fact that traffic offenses are a kind of crime that can be processed by all social classes and social groups and finally the fact that traffic offenses contain such kind of risks that cannot be sold in a capitalist economy. Results reveals that variables such as gender, age, education, occupation and income level affects opinions and behaviours of participants about traffic offenses. On the other hand, the findings also reveals that having traffic accidents with fatal or injury does not have much effect on participants opinions about the causes and solutions of traffic offenses. Traffic offenses host in different types of crimes ranging from violation of light to negligence causing death requires clarification with conceptual integration of many crime theories. Therefore, this study attempt to clarify traffic offenses with the help of certain concepts of deterrence theory, routine activities theory and social learning theory with neutralization techniques. Key Words: Crime, sociology of crime, theories of crime, traffic accidents, traffic offenses