Recklessness of car almost hitting a centre of population (8)
I believe the answer is:
audacity
'recklessness' is the definition.
(audacity can mean rashness or recklessness)
'car almost hitting a centre of population' is the wordplay.
'car almost' becomes 'aud' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'hitting' says to put letters next to each other (hit can mean to touch on or border).
'centre of population' becomes 'city' (cities are centres of population).
'aud'+'a'+'city'='AUDACITY'
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for audacity that I've seen before include "Boldness - such nerve!" , "Courage" , "Temerity" , "Brass neck, boldness" , "Boldness, may be brazen" .)