For many employers, they rely on employees to drive as part of their job. Unfortunately, accidents are one of the risks that come with driving, and at times, those accidents will be the employee’s fault. To help minimize employee-caused accidents, companies should be prepared for when an employee causes an accident by providing training, having written procedures, understanding the limits of the business insurance, and being prepared for lawsuit.
Provide training
It is in a company’s best interest to ensure an employee is properly trained before they drive as part of their job. Also, employees driving trucks and other large vehicles may be required to get specific training and a commercial driver license (CDL), employees that drive passenger cars for their job are not required to have specific training beyond their basic driver’s license training. Moreover, for many employees, especially those who first obtained their driver’s license as a teenager, it may have been years since their knowledge of the driving smarts had been formally tested.
To help ensure that the employees hired for driving are competent drivers, employers may want to require those employees to take additional driver’s training. These days, online safe driving training makes employee driving training easy to complete and carry relatively low-cost. If employers are going to rely on online safe driving courses, it is recommended that they have the employee complete the course at the office and on the clock to avoid violating any wage payment laws.
Provide written procedures
In addition to training employees to help prevent accidents, it is important that employees know what to do when they cause an accident. For this reason, employers should develop and distribute a written driving policy that explains the steps an employee should take if they are in an accident.
The policy should instruct the employee to:
- not admit fault.
- contact the proper authorities immediately to report the accident and to obtain a police report.
- contact their supervisor to make them aware of the accident so arrangements can be made to minimize delays or disruptions caused by the accident.
- take pictures of the accident, including damage to all vehicles involved.
- obtain the name, phone number, and insurance information of the drivers of any other vehicles involved in the accident and the name and phone number of any witnesses.
The driving policy may also want to put the employee on notice that:
- they may lose driving privilege for an indefinite period time if the accident is deemed to be their fault.
- if their driving privileges are suspended, the company may restore their driving privilege only after they complete an investigation and deem the employee safe to drive.
- they may be terminated immediately if the accident was due to a particularly dangerous or risky behavior.
- they may be terminated immediately if they lie about the cause of an accident.
Know your company’s insurance coverage
Because an employee-caused accident will inevitably involve claims from the other party, a company needs to understand the coverage of their business automobile insurance. This is especially important if an employee is driving their personal vehicle.
Many business automobile insurances do not provide protection for personal vehicles driving for business purposes, or if they do, it requires the coverage to be specifically added to the policy which additional cost. Employers may also want to consider whether they should pay employees for the expense of adding business use coverage to their personal car insurance to help minimize potential legal liabilities.
Be prepared for lawsuits
Businesses are targets for employee-caused car accident lawsuits, because they usually have more money to pay out to the victims of the accident. For example, if an employee in Georgia hits a motorcycle driver and causes significant injures the driver, the employee may seek help recovering the costs of the accident by hiring a Georgia Motorcycle Accident Attorney. And that attorney, as part of his responsibility as the victim’s attorney, will necessarily include the company as an opposing party to the lawsuit because it is that attorney’s duty to get the best result for their client.
Being aware of this risk and preparing for it may help minimize the financial cost of the lawsuit by saving the company’s attorney time. A prepared company will already be gathering the relevant information and documents related to the accident as well as the results of internal investigations. It may also be helpful to have a simple manager responsible for talking to the attorney so there is less confusion, and the company is not wasting their attorney’s time by having multiple managers providing their attorney with the same information.
Conclusion
The more employees drive as part of their job, the higher the likelihood they will be in an accident. And unfortunately, some of these accidents may be the employee’s fault. Employers should be prepared for these situations by properly training their employees to drive safely, have writing post-accident procedures, understand the limits of the company’s automobile insurance, and preparing for inevitable lawsuits. By doing so, the company can minimize that disruption and cost related to employee-caused car accidents.
