Revision summary
Dilemmas: an honest account may prosecute the driver and sink a critical deal; silence or a lie may save the deal and abandon the rider. Stakeholders include the victim, both firms, the officer and future road users. Rejected options are amnesia, a silence-for-signature bargain, and flight. Response is medical help, a true statement of speed and loss of control, no coaching, and honest report to one's own company. A deal that requires perjury is not a deal worth keeping.
Model answer
Introduction
A bleeding stranger, a speeding host, and a deal that your firm needs are three duties in one car. The law of the road does not pause because a purchase order is unsigned.
Body
Stakeholders
- The injured motorcyclist, whose life and evidence window are closing.
- The manager of company B, who drove fast and lost control.
- You as the sole eyewitness and as manager of company A.
- Company A's workers and owners, who need the deal.
- Company B's owners, who did not authorise a hit-and-lie.
- The investigating officer and the court, who need a true witness.
- Other road users, who will meet this driver again if tonight is buried.
Ethical issues and values
- Right to life and justice for the injured versus loyalty to a commercial deal.
- Truth-telling versus a profitable silence.
- Integrity: an eyewitness who lies is an accessory to a false case, not a clever negotiator.
- Conflict of interest: your firm's gain is now tied to a man's escape from the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and criminal law.
- Compassion for the victim first; even the driver is a person, but he is not entitled to your perjury.
Dilemmas
- Truth versus deal: an honest statement may end the dinner contract and hurt your plant; a lie may save the contract and bury the rider.
- Loyalty to employer versus loyalty to law: the company pays your salary; it did not buy your tongue.
- Gratitude versus justice: he offered a lift; a lift is not a right to your silence.
- Certainty versus fear: you saw speed and loss of control; a lawyer may later twist you; fear of cross-examination is not a moral veto.
- Immediate rescue versus remaining to watch the story: if you only "manage the deal" while the rider bleeds, you have already chosen.
Options
- Option 1: Tell the officer you saw nothing, or that the motorcyclist was at fault, to save the deal.
- Merit: possible contract.
- Demerit: false evidence, possible later prosecution of you, and a victim without a witness. Rejected.
- Option 2: Bargain privately: you will stay silent if he signs tonight.
- Merit: looks like leverage.
- Demerit: extortion wearing a contract; still a lie to the police. Rejected.
- Option 3: Flee the scene to "avoid involvement".
- Merit: none that is ethical.
- Demerit: illegal and cowardly; you were in the car.
- Option 4: Ensure medical help, give a true statement of speed and loss of control, cooperate, inform your own company honestly, and pursue the deal later through another officer of B if B is still a lawful firm.
- Merit: life, law, and a clean career.
- Demerit: this deal may die; that is a cost, not a duty to lie.
Response
- First, the person on the road: first aid, 112 / 108, do not let the car leave if it is needed as evidence and if staying is safe.
- Do not accept coaching in the back seat. If he asks you to "say the brakes failed" or "the rider came from nowhere" when that is false, refuse once, clearly.
- To the law-enforcement officer: state what you perceived — high speed, loss of control, your position as passenger, lighting and road as you remember. Do not add what you did not see. Do not subtract the speed.
- You are not the judge of sentence. You are a witness. Strict accident law is the legislature's choice; it is not yours to nullify for a spare-parts order.
- Inform your senior in company A the same night: the deal is at risk because of an accident and because you will not lie. Ask to reopen with B's leadership, not with a frightened manager's secret.
- If B's firm punishes the truth by killing a lawful contract, that is information about B's ethics. A deal bought with perjury would have been a bad partner anyway.
- Do not sell the story to a newspaper for pressure. Process first.
- Support the victim's hospitalisation as a human being if you can do so without contaminating evidence or seeming to buy silence.
Justification
- The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and the Indian Penal Code / Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions on rash driving exist so that a commercial dinner is not a licence to maim.
- Professional ethics for a manager includes not committing or abetting an offence in the firm's name.
- The stem's "immense importance" of the deal is a test of whether importance can launder a lie. It cannot.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD HIT[Speeding hit] --> LIFE[Aid the rider] HIT --> DIL[Truth versus deal] DIL --> TRUE[Honest eyewitness account] DIL --> LIE[Save the contract] LIE --> CRIME[False evidence] TRUE --> LATER[Deal via clean channel or no deal]
Conclusion
The dilemmas are truth versus contract, gratitude versus justice, and employer loyalty versus the injured stranger. Rescue, tell the speed as you saw it, refuse a coached story, and let the deal live or die in daylight. A purchase order is not worth a false witness.
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Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q9). View answer →
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If I am not a forensic expert, should I refuse to speak?
Speak to what you perceived: speed, control, seating. Do not invent physics. Silence about obvious speeding is already a kind of speech.
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Can my company fire me for sinking the deal?
A firm may be unjust. Lying for them is still a crime and a stain. Report internally; keep your own record of the true statement.
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