How businesses should deal with traffic accidents caused by their vehicles – Small Business Corner

If you start a business, you might enjoy acting as the boss or CEO. You may have a vision for the company you plan to enact. Maybe you’ll reach a point where you can expand your product line, go international, or partner with another like-minded business for an exciting initiative.

If you make physical products, you may also need to have a fleet of vehicles you use to deliver them. Maybe you have physical store locations with your company name on them, or perhaps you’ve found a store chain willing to carry your products.

That means you’ll need to hire competent drivers. However, even if they have prior experience in this niche, they might still cause an accident. Maybe they rear-end a car ahead of them or do something similarly reckless.

You must determine the blame following a rear-end car crash, and that applies whether you have someone driving a company vehicle or a private one. As you might expect, though, as someone running a business, you must approach this situation with a little delicacy.

Let’s talk about how you can deal with the aftermath if there’s an accident involving one of your company’s vehicles.

Talk to the driver and instruct them on what to do

First, you’ll need to deal with the situation that arises right after the crash. If one of your drivers contacts you and tells you they caused an accident, or that another driver hit your company’s vehicle, then you should first ask them whether they’re hurt. If they say that they are, you should tell them to call 911 and get an ambulance immediately.

If they’re not hurt, you might ask them to take some smartphone videos or pictures of the crash. Those might come in handy later for liability purposes.

You can next instruct the driver to cooperate with the police and tell them what happened. You should tell the driver to get a copy of the police car accident report, if possible. That might also come in handy if there’s a lawsuit later.

Contact your company’s insurance provider

Presumably, you will have a vehicle insurance provider that covers your company’s fleet. When you have the driver back in the office, ask them to stay in the room with you while you call your insurance company.

You can explain what happened, and you can have the driver speak to the representative who you talk to, as they will have all the relevant details. Make sure the driver gives the insurance company representative all of the information they need.

You might also instruct them not to speculate on the phone about who caused the accident. You can simply ask that they stick to the facts. If the insurance company representative asks about who caused the crash, the driver can say that they’re not in a position to speculate about that.

Call your lawyer

Next, you might call your lawyer. Most company owners or CEOs have a business lawyer, and you will probably want to get their opinion as t