A VERDICT AGAINST COCA-COLA BRINGS HOME THE RISKS INVOLVED
IN USING EVEN HANDS-FREE CELL PHONES WHILE DRIVING.
Perils of Hands-Free Phoning
FOR YEARS, COCA-COLA has barred employees from using cell phones while driving. But in May, a Texas jury awarded a woman $21.5 million in damages when her
car was hit by a Coca-Cola employee driving a company car while using a phone with
a hands-free headset. This was permitted under Coke’s cell-phone driving policy, as
it is at many companies. The employee testified she would not have used the phone
at all had company safety managers told her studies have shown even handless cell-
phone use poses a greater risk of
traffic accidents.
“The problem of distracted
driving because of electronic de-
vices has gotten worse in recent
years,” says Mike McDonald, risk
manager for Quality Distribution,
a national trucking firm, citing the
Coca-Cola concedes the em-
ployee was at fault but is contest-
ing the amount of the award, not-
ing that driving while using a cell
phone is legal in Texas.
“Large judgments like this will
eventually force companies to
take a serious look at banning all
cell-phone use,” says Richard Bleser, senior vice president and fleet
specialty group leader at Marsh
Risk Consulting. “That was a big
hit for a company that was not
being negligent,” he adds.
“explosion” in communication
devices, from smartphones to GPS
devices. His company bans all
cell-phone use while driving, including taking calls from dispatchers, except for emergencies. The
company also is “looking into”
technologies that would block cell
phones from working in a moving
vehicle, McDonald says.
Two years ago, most com-
panies with a lot of employees
on the road were instituting or
already had policies limiting or
banning hand-held cell-phone
use while driving. “Unfortunately,
many of them listened to studies
at the time that suggested hands-
free phones were the way to go,”
A recent survey of 570 fleet
managers by Zoomsafer, a vendor
of hands-free cell-phone equip-
ment, shows employer concern
about distracted driving has
soared, with the portion of com-
panies with cell-phone policies
for drivers rising 31% in less than
a year, to 81%. And in January,
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Illustraiton from Getty Images
Bleser says. In fact, more recent
studies show even hands-free cell
phones significantly increase the
chance of an accident, he says.
Marsh’s Bleser says that regula-
tion and company rules that allow
hands-free cell-phone use will not
end distracted driving accidents or
big damage suits. “There is simply
no room for multitasking when
someone is driving,” he says.
Thomas Henry, lead plaintiff’s
attorney in the Coke case, agrees.
“There has to be a zero cell-phone
use policy,” he says. “That’s the
only real answer to this problem.”
Administration banned commer-
cial drivers from using hand-held
phones while driving.
the problem of
distracted driving
because of electronic
devices has gotten worse
in recent years.
—QUALITY DISTRIBUTION’S
MCDONALD
