A recent survey conducted by our friends at ZoomSafer reveals some interesting figures about business attitudes towards Distracted Driving and employer liability.

The survey covered 500 business managers in North America and was designed to record corporate attitudes and best practices in this area. The results show that there is an increased awareness of the distracted driving problem and of the need to create company policies to address it, which is encouraging – BUT it also shows that many companies do nothing to enforce these policies and hardly any use technological solutions to assist in this.  

A brief summary of the main findings shows that:

  • 32% of companies are aware of vehicle crashes that occurred as a result of distractions stemming from employee use of cell phones while driving. For companies with more than 500 drivers, this figure increased to over 50%
  • 7.6% of companies have been involved in  litigation resulting from damages alleged to have occurred as a result of employee use of cell phones while driving. For companies with >5000 drivers, this figure is 37%
  • 62% of companies have implemented a written cell phone use policy. Trucking and Haulage companies were the most likely to have a written cell phone policy while home and business services companies were least likely
  • 53% of companies with a defined cell phone policy claim to enforce the policy in some manner
  • 25% of respondents who claimed to have a policy failed to describe how their policies were enforced
  • Of those companies who did claim to enforce their policy, 61% said they used “post-incident” employee discipline to enforce compliance
  • Only 2% of those companies claiming to enforce their policies said they used technology solutions to enforce ‘on the road’ compliance 

While it appears that the corporate community is becoming more aware of the fact that they are liable for crashes that occur as a result of employees using cell phones while driving on company business, Zoomsafer quote a leading attorney as saying “The only fiscally and morally responsible corporate response to this known danger is a policy banning it, coupled with employee education and enforcement through active monitoring and available technology before someone is seriously injured or killed.”

The full release can be found at the Zoomsafer website.

We have published this post because the same distraction and liability issues apply to employee use of computers and visual display devices when driving on company business.

Blank-IT has been designed specifically to address the problem of driver distraction and in-vehicle computers and laptops. It is easily installed, doesn’t rely on 3rd party input such as GPS, is fully customisable for different working environments and will help your business conform with distracted driving legislation and OH&S requirements.

Find out more today at Blank-IT – or contact us on 08 9486 7122 (if calling from outside Australia: +61 8 9486 7122).