Car insurance for a personal car used in a corporation

Question

I work for an international corporation having separate companies in Europe and in USA. I am personally based in Europe.

I was notified about a recent incident in USA that included an employee having a car accident with his personal car (truck) during work hours (transferring materials for work from a local warehouse), that the issue actually escalated and the local employees demanded a separate company insurance for their personal cars, as those jobs ideally should have been handled using the existing but not always available company cars, and their personal cars should not be used except the regular commute to work (so they are risk free).

They get gas reimbursement according to the IRS rules.

USA management satisfied their demand.

Is that standard of company insurance covering personal cars typical in USA? What about Europe?

Answer 1

The issue is when does the employees insurance company cover the damage and when will they decide that the use was a business use and determine that the companies insurance should cover the damage.

I had an accident one time when I drove my car on a business trip instead of flying. The reason why I drove was that the entire trip was three weeks, and having my car allowed me to bring more stuff to use on the weekends. My auto insurance never asked about why I was there. I now make sure I have my company pay for me to drive a rental car to the other city, they cover the rental car with their policy.

For management providing a company car is expensive. The risk is that it is underused, or used improperly. It is cheaper in many cases to reimburse employees for short trips.

An employee has to review their insurance policy to make sure that they have the proper level of coverage. They may find that the standard coverage doesn't cover them if they drive for Uber, or deliver Pizza.

A company that wants to cover employee when running errands has to understand what is and isn't covered. Employees have to understand what type of trips are covered so that there are no surprises. I have not worked for a company that provided this coverage to the average employee, but I do know of one company that covered their sales employees when using the employees car for sales visits.

Answer 2

You don't specify where in Europe you are located but I can answer for the UK at least.

Here there are different "classes" of business car insurance available for privately owned vehicles depending upon what the business use is (e.g traveling to different sites is one type, driving to customers is another and using the car as a taxi or a driving school car would be "Commercial").

These are done as additional cover on your standard policy and it is the responsibility of the individual to get this cover in place, however the "mileage" payments the company (should) give the employee for any business mileage driven in their personal vehicle is supposed to include a contribution towards this.