Tort- joint liability Union of India v. United India Insurance Co. Ltd., AIR 1998 (SC) 640 Fact- driver was angry with some of the passengers who found fault with him for delay and he told them that he would abandon the bus and leave the passengers in a forest. By noon, the bus reached Cochin and proceeded to Kalady via Angamali. The bus was to cross an unmanned level crossing at Akaparamba at about 3 P.M. The said railway crossing had no gates or stiles. It is now found on evidence that the caution board at the entrance of the level crossing was moth-eaten and the writings thereon could not be deciphered by anyone even if one was inclined to read. The train was visible to the driver and passengers at a distance of 1 km. The driver drove the vehicle and was crossing the railway line when the vehicle stopped on the track and did not move. The passengers cried and shouted in panic but the bus remained there and was pushed upto a distance of 500 metres by the locomotive. In that process forty passengers and the driver died while some other passengers were injured. We have accepted that the driver of the said motor-vehicle was negligent. The question is whether the driver's negligence in any manner vicariously attaches to the passengers of the motor-vehicle of which he was the driver ? There cannot be a fiction of the passenger sharing a 'right of control' of the operation of the vehicle nor is there a fiction that the driver is an agent of the passenger. A passenger is not treated as a backseat driver. (Prosser and Keeton on Torts, 5th Ed., 1984 P. 521-522). It is therefore clear that even if the driver of the passenger vehicle was negligent, the Railways, if its negligence was otherwise proved - could not plead contributory negligence on the part of the passengers of the vehicle. What is clear is that qua the passengers of the bus who were innocent, - the driver and owner of the bus and, if proved, the railways - can all be joint tort-feasors. because the Railways are involved in what is recognised as dangerous or perilous operations, they are at common law, to take reasonable and necessary care, on the 'neighbourhood' principle - even if the provisions in Section 13(c) and (d) of the Railways Act, 1890 are not attracted for want of requisition by the Central Government. we hold that the claim for compensation is maintainable before the Tribunal against other persons or agencies which are held to be guilty of composite negligence or are joint tort-feasors, and if arising out of use of the motor vehicle.