Is Your Driving Policy OSHA Compliant? Are You Sure?

Employers need to take distracted driving seriously for workers who drive on company time; otherwise, employers should expect citations and penalties from OSHA. An employer’s responsibility extends to workers who:

  • Drive full or part time;
  • Drive a company vehicle or their own;
  • Use a company-provided phone or their own phone for work purposes; and
  • Text, browse, or speak on the phone –even with hands-free devices.

Why Should Employers Be Concerned With Distracted Driving?

OSHA claims distracted driving is the top cause of workplace deaths. The National Safety Counsel (NSC) estimates that cellphones are involved in over one quarter of all traffic crashes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each day, more than nine people are killed and 1,060 more are injured in crashes that involve a distracted driver.

When a vehicular accident occurs, records exist that show whether a driver was using a cellphone while in a moving vehicle, which makes it easy for lawyers to find evidence against the employer if the worker was driving for work and/or conducting work with the mobile device.

On its Distracted Driving webpage, OSHA says employers who require their employees to text while driving—or who organize work so that doing so is a practical necessity even if not a formal requirement – violate the OSH Act and are subject to citations and penalties.

OSHA encourages employees to file complaints, if necessary. OSHA’s website says, “When OSHA receives a credible complaint that an employer requires texting while driving or who organizes work so that texting is a practical necessity, we will investigate, and where necessary, issue citations and penalties to end this practice.”

Organizations that resist creating and enforcing policies prohibiting employees from using cellphones while driving put workers and others at risk of serious injury and increase employer liability.

Does “Distracted Driving” Include Hands-Free Phone Use?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines Distracted Driving as activities including texting, eating, use of navigation systems, and talking on a cell phone –even hands-free. The National Safety Counsel reports that cell phone conversations, handheld or hands-free, are just as dangerous for drivers.

Most employers don’t have a distracted driving policy at all, but it is becoming more and more clear that a total ban of cell phone use is going to become the standard.

Creating and Enforcing A Distracted Driving Policy

A Distracted Driving Policy should be practical, enforceable, and designed to protect employees and employers. What is practical and enforceable may vary by industry, but employees need to be trained to comply with any applicable state law, including mandatory seatbelt use and applicable cell phone restrictions.

Currently, no state law addresses both hands-free and handheld phone use among all drivers for both talking and text messaging, so the NSC recommends employer policies exceed state law requirements.

Simply writing and communicating a policy is not enough. Although not failsafe protection from lawsuits, strictly enforced policies can help reduce incidents. When deciding an enforcement policy, avoid a zero tolerance for “all distracted driving” with termination as a corrective action. On paper, this sounds like a clear and enforceable policy, but being distracted while driving is inevitable, even if cell phones are not part of the equation, and immediate termination would not be a suitable corrective action in all cases. A clear, simple and enforceable policy may be something similar to “The driver shall not use a mobile device , hands-free or otherwise, while the vehicle is moving.”

Consider a variety of methods to monitor (and document) employee compliance, such as:

  1. Observing compliance from the parking lot.
  2. Drivers’ records & traffic citations.
  3. Safe driving observations.
  4. In-vehicle camera monitoring.
  5. Technologies that prohibit cellphone use while driving.

In order to help control risk to the organization and safeguard workers, all employees who violate the distracted driving policy and other safe driving policies should receive documented penalties by the employer including, where appropriate, termination.


Safety First Consulting helps businesses identify OSHA compliance deficiencies in their workplaces, manage their safety programs, and become accountable for the results. In addition to offering custom written safety programs for companies, Safety First Consulting provides required safety training, industrial hygiene sampling, noise sampling, and workplace inspections.

Source
by Robert Box

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