Duty of Care Travel Policy for Ground Transportation

What is duty of care in business travel?

Duty of care in business travel is an organization's legal and moral obligation to take reasonable steps to protect the health and safety of employees and others traveling on its behalf. GBTA's travel risk management toolkit describes travel risk management as the practice that lets an organization fulfill that duty.

Two reference points shape what reasonable means. ISO 31030:2021, the international guidance standard for travel risk management, gives organizations a structured approach to travel risk policy, program development, threat and hazard identification, risk assessment, and prevention and mitigation. GBTA also distinguishes the standard of care, the level of care a reasonable organization would exercise, which is often judged against practice in the same industry and so moves over time.

This page is general information to organize your thinking, not legal advice. Obligations differ by jurisdiction and industry, so set standards with your legal and risk teams.

What duty of care applies to ground transportation?

In ground transportation, duty of care covers who drives your travelers, what they ride in, how long the driver has already worked, who knows where travelers will be, and how they get help if something goes wrong. It is the part of a trip where the traveler has the least control.

• Operator: licensed, authorized and insured for the work
• Driver: screened, licensed for the vehicle and within hour limits
• Vehicle: maintained, inspected and suited to the trip
• Information: itineraries shared on a need-to-know basis
• Help: a contact the traveler can reach, with an escalation chain behind it
• Learning: incidents and near misses reviewed and fed back into the program

How do you vet transportation operators and drivers?

Vet operators against public records where they exist and against documents where they do not. For buses, minibuses and other larger passenger vehicles, FMCSA's Bus Safety Search lets travel planners confirm that a company is authorized to operate, review its safety rating and public safety categories, and check that passenger authority and insurance are on file.

Sedans and SUVs are generally licensed under state and local for-hire rules that vary by market, so vetting relies more on the provider's own process. Ask how drivers are screened, how licenses and permits are verified, what training is required, how vehicles are inspected, and how partner operators are checked in markets where the provider does not run its own vehicles. Ask for certificates of insurance and agree the required limits with your risk team.

• Operating authority and safety record, where federal records exist
• Driver screening and license verification process
• Driver training expectations
• Insurance certificates and coverage types, provided on request
• Vehicle inspection and substitution rules
• The same checks applied to partner operators in each market

Why do driver hours matter for traveler safety?

Driver hours matter because a fatigued driver puts everyone in the vehicle at risk, and long corporate days make fatigue easy to build into a schedule. Federal rules for passenger-carrying commercial vehicles bar driving more than 10 hours, or driving after 15 hours on duty, following 8 consecutive hours off duty (49 CFR 395.5).

Illustrative example: an offsite that starts with a 6:00 a.m. pickup and ends with an 11:00 p.m. return asks one driver to cover a 17-hour span. Build the schedule so the operator can rotate drivers, and expect a proposal to show it. FMCSA's public safety categories include hours-of-service compliance, which gives you one more record to check for larger vehicles.

Sedan and SUV chauffeurs may fall outside those federal rules, so ask the provider what limits it applies to its own drivers on long days.

What should a duty of care business travel policy say about ground transport?

A duty of care business travel policy should say when pre-booked ground transportation is required, which providers are approved, what travelers receive before pickup, how safe arrival is confirmed and how sensitive trips are handled. Clear defaults protect travelers better than a long policy nobody reads.

Travelers have responsibilities too, which GBTA's toolkit calls duty of loyalty: following the policy, including keeping bookings current and telling the travel team when plans change. Booking data only helps locate people if it is up to date.

• Pre-booked transportation required for late-night, early-morning and solo arrivals in unfamiliar cities
• Approved providers listed, and the cases where rideshare is acceptable
• Driver name, vehicle and pickup point sent to the traveler before pickup
• A simple way for the traveler to confirm safe arrival
• Sensitive trips: no names on signs, no discussion of passenger details, changes only through named contacts
• Traveler responsibilities: keep bookings current and report changes

How should itinerary data be protected?

Protect itinerary data by sharing it only with people who need it, limiting what drivers and local operators see, and agreeing how long records are kept. Transportation records show where senior people will be and when, which makes them sensitive in their own right.

Ask how passenger details are passed to local operators, who is responsible for them at each step, and how they are deleted. Put handling rules for sensitive trips in the booking notes, so they travel with the trip instead of sitting in a separate document.

What happens when something goes wrong?

When something goes wrong, the traveler should know exactly who to call, and that person should have a written escalation chain to the provider and to the right people in your company. GBTA's toolkit says a travel risk program needs a resource travelers can contact at any hour, clear escalation procedures and after-action reviews.

Write the chain down and test it before you need it. Check what out-of-hours support the provider describes and what it will commit to in writing. After any incident, hold a short review with the provider and the traveler, and feed the lessons back into policy.

Review the whole program at least once a year, as GBTA's toolkit recommends, and sooner when you enter new markets, change how travel is booked or have a significant incident. Refresh insurance certificates when they renew. A policy that sits unread in a shared drive protects no one.