Scenario: Your car is in for a service and what an inconvenience. Luckily, your friend doesn’t work too far from you and agrees to let you use his car until yours is returned.
You drop him off at work and head to your office. Lunchtime arrives and you pop out to the nearest drive-through to grab some food. On your way back, the tyre bursts, causing the car to collide with a set of traffic lights. You suffer severe damage and are booked off work for two months. What do you do?
South Africa’s public transport system has a long way to go, with the majority of the public having to use taxis or catch a lift with a colleague/friend to get from point A to B. This increases the volume of traffic on our already busy roads.
For the last decade, the Road Accident Fund (Raf) has been a hot topic. Many accident victims have been successful in claiming large amounts from the fund, despite the process taking some time. Statistics show that in 2015, the RAF paid out R 28-billion in claims.
For those of you who don’t know, the RAF is a government-funded entity responsible for compensating people who have been injured or who have suffered loss and damages caused by a motor vehicle accident on our roads. Importantly, the usual time limit in which to claim is three years from the date of the accident.
The usual RAF claim involves an accident or collision between two or more cars on a public road.
But, what happens in a scenario like the one mentioned above when the accident only involves one vehicle, the driver is not the owner of the car and the cause of the accident may have been due to the owner’s negligence in maintaining the car?
A recent case heard in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) sheds some light on this situation.
In that case, the driver was involved in a single motor vehicle accident when his tyre burst and the car rolled over. The car was owned by his father’s employer and he was, therefore, not employed by the vehicle’s owner.
The driver suffered severe injuries to his body as a result of the accident. The question was whether he could claim damages from the RAF, because of the owner’s negligence in not properly maintaining the vehicle‚ which resulted in the tyre bursting.
The SCA ruled in the driver’s favour. The judge said the owner of the vehicle was negligent and relied on this wrongful conduct to sue the fund.
Essentially, the effect of the SCA’s judgement is that if a person who is not the car’s owner is injured in an accident whilst driving the vehicle, and the accident can be attributed to the owner’s failure to maintain the car, the victim may claim compensation from the fund.
The court will look at the liability of the owner, not the driver.
Few people are aware of the relief available to victims who may have found themselves in an unfortunate situation such as this.
We highly recommend that you obtain the services of an attorney in this regard in order to ensure that you are properly compensated for the loss you may have sustained.
Article contributed by Stacey Bonser of Tuckers Inc.
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