Business Liability Relating to Mobile Devices

The business liability arising from use of mobile devices while driving is outlined in the ZOOMSAFER 2010 White Paper, Distracted Driving: what it means for your corporation.

Using a cell phone or other mobile device while driving is incredibly dangerous; and lawmakers and other governmental officers have recognized this danger and have enacted laws and regulations to curb the use of cell phones while driving.

While this information creates an important basis for understanding the danger caused by cell phone use when driving, it provides only the backdrop for the problem looming over any company’s risk management plan: the potentially massive liability faced by businesses whose employees use cell phones while driving.

How might a company best protect itself from such crippling liability? Recognizing that businesses must do something to manage their potentially massive liability, companies have begun instituting various types of safe driving policies that ban certain types of employee cell phone use while driving.

The mere presence of a corporate paper policy will not protect an employer from liability arising from employees who drive while distracted by cell phones. Paper policies depend entirely on the willingness and compliancy of the employee to self-enforce the policy.

Companies need to properly inform their employees regarding the effects, including monetary, legal and psychological, of an accident caused by cell phone or GPS distractions. Safe driver training and information should be readily available by management to better educate the employee regarding all the consequences to their driving action