Judgment

CHANDRACHUD, CJI:- These appeals raise a question of some importance from the point of view of Insurance Companies which insure motor vehicles against third party risks and more so, from the point of view of the general public which, by reason of the increasing hazards of undisciplined and fast moving traffic, is driven in despair to lodge claims for injuries suffered in motor vehicle accidents. In case of air accidents, the injured and the dependents of the deceased receive, without contest, fairly large sums by way of compensation from the Air Corporations. We have still to awaken to the need to evolve a reasonably comparable method for compensating those who receive injuries or die in road or train accidents. The victims of road accidents or their dependents are driven to wage a long and unequal battle against the Insurance Companies, which deny their liability on every conceivable ground and indulge in an ingenious variety of factual disputations from who was driving the vehicle to whose negligence was the sine qua non of the accident. The delay in the final disposal of motor accident compensation cases, as in all other classes of litigation, takes the sting out of the