The following post first appeared on Mobile Enterprise, and is excerpted here with permission.

It’s difficult to put an exact figure on the cost of distracted driving in the enterprise, but a current estimate of all mobile device related crashes, put forth by the National Safety Council (NSC) from a Harvard risk assessment is $43 billion.

In 2010, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that on-the-job crashes cost employers over $24,500 per crash, $150,000 per injury and $3.6 million per fatality. Apply those numbers to the NHTSA report that distracted driving accounted for approximately 416,000 injuries and 3,092 deaths and it’s clear that liabilities for the enterprise are tremendous.

The NSC offers a few specific examples of what businesses have had to pay in damages for tragedies from distracted driving:

  • $21.6 million, technology company — 2007 crash where driver in company car talking on phone rear-ended a vehicle, causing one fatality.
  • $24.7 million, commercial transportation company — 2008 crash where a driver was reaching for his cell phone, killing three people and injuring 15.
  • $21 million, beverage company — 2010 crash where employee using hands-free device crashed, resulting in severe injury.

So what are businesses doing to manage distracted driving? While it varies by industry and business size, 62 percent of companies have written policies in place, but only 53 percent of those companies enforce compliance according to the report “Measuring Corporate Attitudes about Employee Distracted Driving,” from ZoomSafer. Also, despite the growth of technical solutions, and in contrast to the escalation of BYOD, even fewer companies are using services to manage distracted driving.

Read the rest of this article at Mobile Enterprise.

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