When lawyers refer to the term negligence, they are referring to the circumstances of the accident and in particular whether or not the circumstances indicate that one or more people involved in the accident might have been careless in the manner in which they drove their motor vehicle. The term negligence is a term that relates to the civil law rather than to the criminal law. You don’t need to do much wrong to be negligent in the eyes of the civil law. For example, travelling slightly above a speed limit would be considered to be negligent in the eyes of the civil law. Most of us drive negligently at some point in time, however, unless we injure someone as a result of our negligent driving, nothing usually happens. However, if we drive negligently and seriously injure someone, then that person could recover common law damages from the TAC in a common law claim because of our negligence.