Distracted Driving Policy

BENEFITS

Keeping your workers from using cell phones while they drive is an important safety measure. Although no statute or regulation in Canada requires a company to ban cell phone use by its workers, most jurisdictions’ highway safety or motor vehicle laws ban distracted driving. And if your company doesn’t ban cell phone use by workers, it runs the risk of being found liable under negligence law should those workers become distracted and get into traffic accidents.

HOW TO USE THE TOOL

Adapt this model distracted driving policy, which is based on a model from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, to reflect your operations, equipment, vehicles and OHS program. And it should comply with any relevant laws’OHS or otherwise’in your jurisdiction. For example, if your jurisdiction bars drivers from programming a GPS system while the vehicle is moving, include that ban in your policy. Give it to all employees, including senior management, supervisors, workers and contractors and train them on it.