Overtaking on road an everyday happening, may not always be a rash act: Supreme Court
Bench enhances accident compensation due to a man who lost his wife in a head-on collision with a tractor 30 years ago.
Overtaking is an “everyday occurrence” on Indian roads and may not always be a rash act, the Supreme Court said. File
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Overtaking is an “everyday occurrence” on Indian roads and may not always be a rash act, the Supreme Court said while enhancing the accident compensation due to a man who lost his wife in a head-on collision with a tractor 30 years ago.
A Bench of Justices C.T. Ravikumar and Sanjay Karol dismissed the notion that the man had contributed to the negligence which led to his wife’s demise.
Prem Lal Anand and his wife, who were partners in a business, were travelling in their two-wheeler to Noida to visit a friend when the accident happened near Mehrauli. Mr. Anand had himself suffered serious injuries in the mishap.
“Merely because a person was attempting to overtake a vehicle cannot be said to be an act of rashness or negligence with nothing to the contrary suggested from the record. Further, he lost a member of his family. Not only was the claimant-appellant, Prem Lal Anand, doing an act which is an everyday occurrence on the road that is overtaking a vehicle, but resultantly suffered extensive injuries himself,” Justice Karol, who authored the recent judgment, observed.
The Bench modified the compensation to ₹11.25 lakh from ₹1.01 lakh awarded earlier by the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal.
The court explained that in a case of ‘contributory negligence’ the crucial question would be “whether either party could, by exercise of reasonable care, have avoided the consequence of the other’s negligence”.
Negligence means either subjectively a careless state of mind, or objectively careless conduct. Negligence is not an absolute term, but is a relative one; it is rather a comparative term… To determine whether an act would be or would not be negligent, it is relevant to determine if any reasonable man would foresee that the act would cause damage,” the court explained.
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