Riskier than driving drunk? Reasons to alter your cell phone policy

If your road warriors are guilty of multitasking while they’re on the highway, these findings will probably raise some red flags.

Texting while driving is more dangerous than driving dunk.

Of course, that benchmark has to be misleading. Texting while driving is only dangerous when employees are actually responding to a text message, right?

According to Car and Driver magazine, reading a text is actually more dangerous that texting, when it comes things people do while driving.

Driving at 35 mph, drivers’ reaction times were slower when reading a text than writing one.

Scary thought: Your firm could end up on the hook if a staffer causes an accident while texting on his or her company phone.

Best bet: Get together with HR and legal to draft a specific policy about what employees  cannot do on their company cell phones while driving — i.e., text messaging, reading or answering e-mail, etc.

In addition to the written policy, managers should encourage good behavior, such as not calling or sending text messages on the road.

Because there are very few laws banning texting while driving, it may be a good idea to specifically ban any cell phone use for driving employees.