Duty of Care: What Employees should Understand
- The Transportation Alliance
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
By: Frank Ciccarella, Synergize Consulting, LLC
Helping Employees Understand Duty of Care
Introduction
This article is about an important standard that our NEMT / Paratransit / Taxi drivers and companies are held to. When we take on the job of transporting passengers, we have an obligation to provide a Duty of Care towards the passengers. Duty of Care is a term that applies to our employees and how we provide service to our passengers. In our world, providing care and safe transportation for our passengers is a one of the predominant, foundational, responsibilities that a driver can have. How we care for the passengers can be the difference in how our business grows or it’s decline.
What Does Duty of Care Mean?
So, what does this term mean? The law dictionary provides this definition:
Duty of Care is a requirement that a person act towards others and the public with the watchfulness, attention, caution, and prudence that a reasonable person in the same circumstances would use. If a person’s actions do not meet this standard of care, then the acts are considered negligent, and any damages resulting may be claimed in a lawsuit for negligence. In tort law, Duty of Care is defined as a civil wrong or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental from which injury occurs to another.
These two definitions go hand in hand. Duty of Care is a legal obligation which is imposed on an individual, in the NEMT/Paratransit/Taxi world, the driver and company, which requires them to adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. An example of requirements of Duty of Care may be the securement of a mobility device, driving defensively, failure to maintain safe following distance, etc. Any failure in anyone of these areas listed can constitute a failure of Duty of Care towards our passengers.
In my example of how it is worded in legal action, Duty of Care is usually used by Plaintiff Attorney when a Notice of Complaint is filed against your company.
When you received a complaint or legal notice from an attorney, it usually starts out with the wording: Joe’s Transportation Company failed to provide a duty of care towards the plaintiff, Mrs. Peters, who was a passenger on your vehicle driven by your employee Bob Smith on 5/1/2026.
Then the plaintiff attorney then will list a series of wrong doings which they believe has occurred and led to the failure of your company not being able to provide Duty of Care for your passenger and their client.
How Does Duty of Care Effect My Company?
Duty of Care can affect your company in many ways and can start with passenger complaints through legal action against your company. Complaints to your company about a drivers actions, operational issues, driver training, vehicle safety, vehicle maintenance, dispatch operation are all the precursor areas to problems that need to be addressed. Ignoring complaints, or not resolving complaints, tend to grow with intensity, or worse yet, result in an accident or incident that could have been prevented.
These deficiencies can and will probably be disclosed through discovery if legal action is taken against you. We want to make sure, especially in our world, that we have our “NORMS” established which contain our policies, programs, and procedures in place and are being used when we operate our company.
Setting of the “:NORMS” of operation and the Three “P”s will help you build your foundational training programs and allow you to operate efficiently, safely, and provide good quality customer service. This is important, as many of our NEMT/Paratransit / Taxi companies are small operators and having good foundational training, or the “NORMS” will help you train drivers to proficiency so they don’t have intentional or accidental incidents or accidents which injury occurs, and possible legal action would take place.
A Word About Mistakes
We are all human and mistakes can happen. Mistakes can also lead to loss of business, and the terminations of employees that are involved. There are no real positives coming from mistakes that are made. It is important that when you receive a complaint, or discover a mistake made, that it is investigated completely and resolved. Understanding why the complaint or mistake occurred, how to prevent it from occurring again, will help you with retraining of employees so that mistake can be eliminated from happening. In the NEMT / Paratransit / Taxi world, mistakes made in our operations and by our drivers can be costly. They result in poor service, and can lead to accidents, injuries, fatalities, and litigation.
In Summary
Management and Leadership definitions are not the same, and have different meanings; there are differences between the two:
Management means that managers manage things and that means they control, direct, and count.
Leadership means that leaders lead people and that means they inspire other employees to pursue our shared goals for the company and influence the way employees behave.
Duty of Care encompasses leaders who set the example, lead our employees to do it right, the first time and every time. This will help you reach your goals by avoiding improper actions and mistakes while passengers and the public ride on our vehicles and have our trust.
Comments