· 1 min read
Duty of care and the car: what your policy probably already requires
Most travel policies contain a duty-of-care clause that ground transport quietly fails. Here is what a compliant journey record looks like.
Most organisations of any size have a travel policy with a duty-of-care clause: a commitment to know where travelling employees are and to take reasonable steps for their safety. Flights and hotels are usually well covered because they are booked through systems that record everything. Ground transport is frequently the gap.
What a compliant journey record contains
- Who travelled, and who authorised it.
- The assigned chauffeur, identified and licensed.
- The specific vehicle, with commercial insurance.
- Pickup and destination, with timestamps.
- A retained record after the fact, not just a live tracking screen.
Where self-booked trips fall down
Not because the drivers are unsafe — most are perfectly fine — but because the organisation holds no record. If something goes wrong and you are asked to demonstrate what steps you took, "the employee ordered a car on their phone" is not a satisfying answer to a regulator, an insurer, or a family.
Licensing and insurance
Commercial passenger transport in Ontario is licensed and insured differently from private driving. Certificates are available to corporate accounts as part of vendor onboarding — most procurement teams ask, and they should.
The practical fix
It is not complicated: route the journeys that matter through a booked account so they generate a record, and leave low-stakes trips to whatever is convenient. Most policies we see draw the line at airport transfers, client-facing movements and travel outside normal hours.
How the account and its reporting work is on the corporate page.
