Here's a sentence:
The Good Samaritan Parable tells a story of how a jew traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho was robbed and beaten by criminals who then left him to die by THE side of the road.
The road by the side of which he was left to die had two sides. Why does the author of the sentence uses the definite article before the word side? It could be any side. Shouldn't it be "by a side of the road", instead?