Posted By Jem
With regards to ‘drivers at work’ using personal vehicles.

Do you:

1. Keep hard copies of driving licenses, insurance certificates and MOT certificates on file?
2. Periodically check visually check documentation and keep a log of the checks?
3. Rely on employment terms and conditions to put the responsibility on the employee that these are in place?
4. Other? – please elaborate

Jem

Posted By Steve E
It should also be remembered that your employees should have suitable insurance which would include business miles otherwise they could invalidate their insurance.

Posted By Jem
Thanks for your responses and I can confirm that your points are covered in my policy.

The main reason for my post was to see if other organisation kept actual copies of drivers’ documentation, as this is the procedure that I want to implement.

An alternative management of the policy would be to require managers to visually inspect documentation periodically and record and document this.

My preference is to keep copies of all such documents in personnel files, mainly as this is easier to manage and control.

Jem

Posted By Robert.
So what if an employee racks up penalty points for social and domestic driving and none for work related driving. What do you do then?

Posted By Pete48
Totally agree Steve. Whatever happened to trust between an employee and employer?
Reasonable person knows and understand, maybe helped by a company briefing note, the conditions for using their private vehicle on company business. Irrespective of business use, they are personally responsible for having a current licence and that their vehicle is always insured and roadworthy as well as driving within the law. So the only difference is business miles for which they will not be insured unless they have declared it. Employee signs receipt of company procedures in just the same way as they sign for employment contract. Then, presumably, they are reimbursed for any expenses incurred and therefore confirm that they do comply with all the requirements every time they make such a claim. Is that reasonable for both parties? I think so.
Will it ever go wrong? Of course it will. Would it be less likely to go wrong if you have a vast warehouse full of paper and records of checks? I am far from convinced.
Murphy's fifth law says that the pieces of paper you would need to present as evidence would be the ones missing from your vast record base.
There has to be something about reasonableness and proportionality in this matter somewhere.

Posted By David Bannister
Sorry should have said "when they are most likely to die or kill"

Posted By steve e ashton
I can see the potential benefit of advanced, or defensive driver training. I'm sure there are stats somewhere that support their use in a good risk management program.

But document checks and records? Lets get real folks.

Steve

Posted By Brigham
Robert,
You ask what would a company do to an employee who accrued points outside of work. Simple answer and reasonable response would be to put that person on a defensive driving course of say 1/2 day and get him/her assessed by the instructor. What to do if the instructor says he's a liability is one for another discussion...

Posted By David Bannister
I said in my earlier post that there is a range of risk management measures that may be used to reduce road risks.

A documentation check is just one of them. It is an easy way of checking that a driver still possesses a license, whether they have accumulated many penalty points, whether they have insurance in place where relevant, MOT, servicing etc. Each employer must make its own judgment but for me 9+ points on a license indicates that driving behaviour is very suspect, regardless of whether this was on a leisure night or a workday morning.

If a driver cannot use my or his killing machine safely whilst working for me then I feel duty bound to do something about it. If I was made aware he was using a fork lift truck in a dangerous manner or operating a power press without the guards I would take action and I see little difference between these unsafe behaviours.

Just because work driving is done away from our supervision this does not mean we can abdicate responsibility.

Posted By Arfon Wiiliams
Can I just clarify something here? Isn't there an onus on employers to also check the physical state of the car through maintenance? I'm sure I read in the DfT/HSE guidelines that employees had to have their privately owned cars serviced to manufacturers standards and that they should know how to regularly check lights, tyres and washer levels for example.