With a (thankfully) booming construction industry these days and growth even happening outside of our home towns, travel and transportation is more of a focus than ever. Safety should always be the first concern but liability is a close second.
Some business owners may question what the right thing to do is when it comes to employees getting to and from job sites daily. Should they drive their own personal vehicle? Or should you provide a company vehicle? What do either of those scenarios look like from a coverage standpoint to be sure you and your company are protected? Here are a few tips that will hopefully help clarify these uncertainties.
Quite simply, it is not recommended that employees drive their own personal vehicles for work purposes. Work use is typically defined by going to or from a job, transporting tools or equipment, and/or other employees riding along as passengers. If an employee crashes their own car while working, their personal auto policy usually pays first, but many Florida drivers carry only the state minimums, and personal policies can exclude some business uses. Your business can be sued too. Without hired and non-owned auto coverage on your business policy, your company may have no protection for that claim.
If you decide to provide a company vehicle to an employee, there are a few steps you can take (in addition to adding them to your policy immediately) to avoid what we call “negligent entrustment.”
- On the written job application, ask applicants to list any driving violations or accidents from the past 5 years.
- Get permission to check driving records on a separate form, not in the job application. If you use a screening company or a third-party monitoring service to pull motor vehicle records (MVRs), federal law requires a standalone written disclosure and the driver’s signed authorization first. If the form says so, one authorization can cover checks during employment as well as at hire, so you can review records every year. If a driving record leads you to decide not to hire someone or to take away driving duties, there are also notice steps to follow before and after that decision. The FTC’s guide, Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know, walks through each step, and it’s worth having your employment attorney review your forms.
- Before allowing anyone to drive a vehicle for company purposes, have the individual provide proof of a valid driver’s license.
- If the individual has lived in other states during the previous 5 years, obtain drivers’ license information for those states.
- Require all drivers to report any violations they receive or accidents they are involved in as soon as possible. This includes incidents involving personal vehicles.
- Check all drivers’ MVRs at least once a year.
Other important factors include:
– Vehicle Condition and Maintenance
– Driver Training
– Policy of Restricting Personal Use of company vehicles (including those vehicles that go home with employees after work hours)
Evaluating the current status of your company’s fleet safety and risk management program is extremely important. And a step further, making the effort to improve those policies where needed on a regular basis will help limit your company’s exposure to a negligent entrustment judgment, as well as help control your future insurance costs.
