#SalmanKhanVerdict: Whose road is it anyway?
Following the verdict by the Mumbai Sessions Court in the hit-and-run bakery case of 2002, where Salman Khan's land cruiser smashed into the sidewalk killing one and injuring several others sleeping there, the spotlight is back on car accidents.
The court has ruled the accident as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, with the Bollywood star found guilty of drunken driving.
Following the verdict a number of people sympathetic to Khan have asked: was it Salman's fault or that of the people on the sidewalk? Some honourable folks have called the victims who were sleeping on the pavement "dogs" and others have said in another country there would not have been so many homeless people, so there would have been nobody killed.
This sounds insensitive, and it is. However, this is not the first time the question has been asked in the history of automobile use and perhaps not the last.
Who do roads belong to? Cars or to people? Therefore, in case of an accident, who is responsible? The car driver or the person using the road. In today's day it may seem obvious the answer is the person using the road, but it was not always so.
Jaywalking, the term to describe pedestrians using the road at the wrong place - perhaps can be extended to people sleeping on kerbs, as pedestrians sleeping where they are not meant to - amounting to an offence is seen as a conspiracy floated by the car industry to shift the onus onto pedestrians for accidents and encourage the use of cars on the roads.
"The newspaper coverage quite suddenly changes, so that in 1923 they're all blaming the drivers, and by late 1924 they're all blaming jaywalking," BBC quotes a history professor and author on the motor age as saying in a 2014 article.
Technically the people on the sidewalk were not jaywalkers, but the same rules would apply - they were not walking where they were not supposed to, but they were sleeping where they were not supposed to. Ergo: it's their fault.
Jaywalking is a crime in the US - where the derogatory term for pedestrians first came into existence - but not in the UK. Yet, there are more pedestrian deaths in the US than in UK. In India, where rules are a mess, you often have no option but to break them, and cars and pedestrians are seen doing so in equal measure.
However, sidewalks, whether you walk, stand dance or sleep on them, are meant for pedestrians and not for cars. In case of jaywalking at least it is a pedestrian going where he/she knows he/should is putting themselves at risk, a pedestrian would naturally assume the sidewalk is a safe place for people, not cars. The argument that the people sleeping on the roads are guilty does not hold.
Salman Khan, with his superstar status, his history of philanthropy and the connect with millions of fans, elicits an emotional response and what is a subject of law easily shifts to being about personality, and whether he "deserves" the punishment being handed out to him. But while Salman Khan may indeed be lovable and charismatic and even philanthropic, he has a side to him that is violent, rash and out of control. Do car owners really have the right to be that way and can we argue it is not really their fault that pedestrians and sidewalk users must not take this personally when a life or two are lost?
Pedestrians, jaywalkers and sidewalk users have a survival instinct - they are aware that the machine is more powerful. Car users need reminding of the law for their survival instinct to kick in, that if they are rash, they will meet the fate of Salman Khan.
In the coming days can we expect the car industry to show its muscle, establishing right of way on the roads - and if you give them an inch - will they attempt to grab a share of the sidewalk as well?