Duty Of Care

• Duty of Care penalty
  
  A whopping £30,000 fine has been levied on a vegetable wholesale company after one of its employees was killed in a road crash as a result of falling asleep at the wheel, due to working over long hours.
  
  
  The successful prosecution was brought by the Health and Safety Executive after it was able to demonstrate that the company was not adequately monitoring its employees working hours and was subsequently failing in its duty of care towards them.
  
  
  
  The company also had to pay out £24,000 in costs, making the total bill £54,000.
  
  
  
  It is now quite conceivable that the same process could be applied if, say, an employee killed another road user whilst on the mobile phone and was able to demonstrate that there was no company policy in place that specifically disallowed the use of a phone whilst driving.