Business Fleet, the magazine covering the small fleet industry, is showcasing ZoomSafer's innovative safe driving software in a great article penned by Thi Dao for this month's issue.  Dao praises ZoomSafer for offering fleets of all sizes a simple option to decrease risks, limit liability, and even prompt lower insurance rates.  ZoomSafer's unique safe driving solutions combine a mobile application to stop texting and emailing while driving with a comprehensive policy management system.  Dao commends ZoomSafer for enabling fleet managers to enforce company cell phone use policies, reducing liability and protecting their most important, valuable assets - their employees.

Fleet managers keen to understand and mitigate the consequences distracted driving can create may wish to consult ZoomSafer's recently published white paper, Distracted Driving: Understanding Your Business Risk and Liability.  The paper examines the potential liability issues resulting from insufficient employee cell phone use policies.  This is a topic I've discussed before.  Most recently, the insurance carrier for a company whose employee is alleged to have been using her cell phone while driving a company car involved in a fatal accident has agreed to pay the victim's family nearly $5 million dollars to settle the case.  Likewise, the city of Palo Alto, CA paid $1.5 million to settle the case of a police officer whose cell phone use caused another fatal crash.

These incidents have very clear and tragic human costs, which are borne by the families of the victims and the drivers.  The staggering payouts from these employers, however, highlights where the burden of liability rests - on the employer.  Preventing distracted driving among employees requires not only paper policies, but also enforcing those policies designed to protect employee and employer alike.