Properly compensating road accident victims

An English morning newspaper last week editorialized on a very well known fact: that motorists, often under the influence of liquor, driving top end vehicles at breakneck speed causing death and destruction, too often get off very lightly. It urged that the culprits should not be easily let off the hook with a one-off compensation payment but should be required to support the victim’s wife and children as long as needed. We heartily endorse this suggestion but wonder whether it is a practical possibility. The editorial under reference was hung on the peg of a recent accident in Colombo when the driver of a Mercedes Benz luxury car driven at high speed careened into a slow moving three-wheeler going in the same direction killing its 52-year old driver pronounced dead on admission to hospital or shortly thereafter.

A columnist writing to The Island, our stablemate, said in her Friday column that she knew the victim, Tuan, who her friends had teasingly dubbed ‘your white-capped charioteer,’ very well. He plied his own vehicle for hire and was a remarkably fine man whom she had warmly recommended to her friends. He was ever helpful and scrupulously honest, once returning a bag containing some clothes and Rs. 20,000 a passenger had left in his vehicle. Not succeeding in finding the woman owner, he had requested the columnist who he often drove to the Crescat apartments on the Cinnamon Grand grounds to inquire for somebody helping in an apartment there who may have lost the bag. That was because he had picked up the fare outside the hotel. He intended handing the bag over to the police if the owner couldn’t be otherwise found.

As luck would have it, the person who lost the bag was working for our columnist’s friend. The bag was returned with the contents intact and the reward offered declined. It was only accepted on the insistence of the grateful owner. This man who wouldn’t take hires during Muslim prayer time when he went to the mosque, also volunteered now and again to help sink wells in remote Muslim villages. Such a man with teenage daughters was cut down in the prime of life by a reckless driver, possibly under the influence of liquor who has spent the previous night carousing at a nightclub. He vanished from the scene of the crash leaving two female companions accompanying him to face the music from angry onlookers. Hours after the accident he had enplaned for Dubai returning next day to be arrested by the police on arrival at the BIA.

Drivers as well as vehicle owners are well aware that they must cover themselves with at least third party insurance to drive on the pubic road. This is required to ensure that third parties, like pedestrians unfortunately injured in a road accident, are protected. But how adequately are such accident victims compensated by the various insurers? There are numerous instances where compensation has been woefully insufficient. Granted guilty parties do make settlements, generally one-off payments. But families of poor victims, cannot or do not, manage whatever they get to tide over the loss of a breadwinner. Granted also that there’s a not uncommon breed who pretend they have been hit by a vehicle to extort what they can. A common ruse is to strike a vehicle passing close to the con artist with the flat of an open hand and yell happuna. A motorist not savvy enough in the ways of such tricksters, making the mistake of stopping the vehicle is immediately confronted with extortionate demands.

A judgment of long ago held that driving a motor vehicle was somewhat akin to walking a tiger on a leash. The dangers of motor vehicles recklessly driven is similar to the tiger breaking loose. “Hold that tiger” was the implied message in that judgment. Published statistics indicate that some 2,419 people had been killed in over 2,000 fatal accidents last year. Over 13,000 were injured, over 5,000 of them critically. No doubt the figures this year are as bad or worse. The Christmas and New Year holiday period invariable sees and exponential rise in drunken driving. While some people take care not to drink and drive, taking taxis to parties and festivities serving alcohol, many more blithely take the wheel hoping they can avoid an encounter with police on their return home.

There’s a National Council for Road Safety under the Ministry of Transport and Highways with a data base of accidents. This indicates that in 2019 a measly Rs. 4.4 million compensation had been paid over road fatalities and just three million rupees to critically injured persons. Given today’s costs, the inadequacy of such payments is self-evident. Not so long ago a group of so-called car enthusiasts engaged in what was called drag racing in deserted Green Path in the dead of night. Neighbours were privy to engine roars and the noise of screeching tyres. But the police, strangely, took little notice. Even though the road was empty there’s always a chance of somebody venturing out or even a homeless tramp on the road being at risk.

Those who saw the grief written on the faces of Tuan’s wife and children, not knowing what a good and fine man he was, obviously reacted angrily to the tragedy. There feelings were aggravated by the fact that the vehicle involved was a Mercedes driven by a rich young businessman probably after liquor. This country has seen too many political brats and rich kids misbehaving in public spaces, most recently with off-road vehicles in the Yala National Park. There is also suspicion that is not unfounded that fatal accidents are sometimes a money making activity for the police. However that be, we can only hope that the conclusion of the investigation into the recent Kollupitiya accident will end favorably for the victims family.