Negligent Entrustment
By Dan Weedin, CIC
Are you a business owner who has vehicles on the road as part of your operations? If so, the employees you place behind the wheel bear not only a lot of responsibility to you, but also for the public’s safety. Unless you take the proper steps to ensure that safety, whom you choose to drive your vehicles can have disastrous ramifications, because you are ultimately responsible under a concept called negligent entrustment.
The dictionary defines negligence as being “guilty of a lack of due care or concern.” Entrustment simply means giving or trusting with responsibility. As a business owner, you certainly have to entrust many responsibilities to your employees, among them the duty of driving your company vehicles. But if an employee of yours drives a company car in an irresponsible manner and causes harm, you will be judged on how much care you took before entrusting him or her with this responsibility.
That being said, how do your current practices compare to the things a “prudent” business owner should be doing to guard against poor drivers? Here is a checklist of things you can do to make sure you have the best possible drivers acting on behalf of your company:
- Obtain a three-year driving record for all potential drivers prior to hiring them. You have to get the prospective employee’s permission, but that’s a good thing, since it might scare off applicants who have a poor history. Make sure your company establishes minimum acceptable standards for an employee’s driving record and adheres to them. It is advisable to run these reports on all drivers annually. Your insurance company can assist you with this.
- Mandate drug and alcohol screening for new employees prior to hiring them. And consider ongoing random drug and alcohol testing for all other drivers. This standard is becoming more common.
- Demand that employees refrain from using cellular phones or any other communication device while driving. I’m sorry; I know that everyone does it — which is probably why cell phone use ranks right up there with driving under the influence as a cause of accidents.
Of course, taking these steps isn’t foolproof. Nothing really is. However, a court of law and potentially a jury will assess your liability based on the procedures you had in place to protect the public. Show them you were determined to do the right thing by establishing a process and sticking to it.
Maybe some of your drivers will think these standards are unfair, but let’s face it: These are your vehicles and it’s your neck on the line. If you put drivers behind the wheel without adequately determining their fitness to drive, you are guilty of a lack of due care and concern. The consequences could put you out of business or, worse yet, cost someone their life.
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