العروة الوثقى الزيدية - موقع إسلامي يهدف لتعريف الزائر بفكر وتراث المسلمين الزيدية

The Question

Question 1: – If a driver operates a car for a wage paid by the owner of the car—meaning the driver is a private hireling—and then an accident occurs in which the car overturns and suffers damage and ruin, is the driver liable or not?

Question 2: – And if a man owns a large vehicle with which he transports merchants’ goods for a fee—being a shared hireling—and then an accident occurs whereby his lorry
overturns and the goods are destroyed; or it does not overturn but the border guards arrest him and confiscate the load because it is prohibited—does the driver bear liability for what occurred due to the overturning or the state soldiers’ confiscation, or not?

Question 3: – Or he works on someone else’s car on the basis that what is earned is split half-and-half between them, and then the car overturns—does the driver bear liability, or not?

The Answer

Answer — and from Allah is success:
As for the first question: the driver is not liable unless he committed fault in his driving. Fault takes forms, such as:
a) Exceeding the customary speed for that type of vehicle on the kind of road where the accident occurred—unless the owner of the car had permitted him to do so, in which case he is not liable.
b) Taking the car along a route that such a vehicle does not ordinarily take due to its danger.
c) A defect occurs in the car that by its nature exposes it to overturning, and he knows of it, yet he drives without repairing it, and the car overturns.

The answer to the second question: the driver is liable in two cases:
a) If the owner of the goods stipulated liability upon the hireling, then he is liable for what perished, was lost, looted, or confiscated.
b) The hireling is liable for the goods if the overturning or confiscation occurred due to the driver’s negligence or wrongful act.

The answer to the third question: he is not liable unless negligence or a wrongful act issued from the
driver. Examples of negligence or wrongful act include: – Descending, during rain, by the car along winding mountain roads so that it skids and overturns.
– Forcing the car into a large torrent so that the car overturns.
- An example of a case with no liability is that the car overturns due to a defect that had not previously become apparent to the driver.
Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.2