If you own a business and one of your employees causes a car accident while on the job, you might assume you are automatically on the hook for the damages. That is often true, but not always. The legal line that decides whether you pay or keep your insurance check rests on one simple question: was the employee actually working at the time of the crash? That question gets tricky when the employee was running a personal errand during what should have been a work-related trip. The law uses a concept called the “frolic and detour” rule to sort out these situations. It sounds old-fashioned, but it is a practical way to decide who pays when an employee’s car accident happens on a side trip that started with company business.
Picture this. Your employee is a delivery driver. She starts her shift, loads the truck, and heads out to drop packages. On the route, she remembers she needs to pick up her dry cleaning. The dry cleaner is two blocks off the main delivery street. She swings by, runs in for two minutes, and pulls back onto the road. While pulling out, she runs a stop sign and hits a pedestrian. Is that accident your problem? The answer depends on how far off course she went and whether the detour was a “frolic” or just a small “detour.”
A frolic is a major departure from the job. If the employee abandons work entirely to do something personal, the employer is not liable. For example, the delivery driver decides to drive thirty miles in the opposite direction to visit a friend for lunch. On that trip she causes an accident. That is a frolic. She is not furthering your business in any way. The accident is her personal problem, not yours.
A detour is a minor deviation that does not completely break the connection to work. The two-minute stop for dry cleaning on the way between deliveries is a classic detour. The employee is still on the clock, still driving the company vehicle, and still planning to finish her deliveries. Courts generally treat that as being within the “scope of employment.” That means you, as the employer, can be held liable for the accident, even though the employee was doing something personal at the exact moment of the crash. The theory is that the detour was so small and temporary that it did not sever the work relationship.
The key factors courts look at are distance, time, and purpose. How far off the approved route did the employee go? How long did the side trip take? Was the personal errand truly personal, or did it also benefit the employer in some small way? An employee who stops for gas while on a work trip is still on the job because filling the tank is necessary for work. An employee who stops to buy a birthday card is doing something strictly personal. But if that stop takes only five minutes and is on the way, courts tend to keep the liability on the employer.
What about after-work errands? Sometimes an employee finishes a work task and decides to run a personal errand on the way home. If the accident happens during that errand, the analysis changes again. The trip home from a job site is generally considered part of the workday if the employee is driving a company vehicle. But if the employee first drives to the grocery store for personal shopping and then gets into an accident in the parking lot, that is usually a frolic. The grocery trip was not part of the job, and the employer is off the hook.
There is also the issue of permission. If you explicitly forbid employees from making personal stops in company vehicles, that can help your defense, but it does not automatically protect you. Courts still look at whether the deviation was minor and foreseeable. If your driver makes a quick coffee stop despite a written policy, a court might still hold you liable because the stop was small and you should have expected it.
The bottom line is that liability follows the employee’s purpose at the moment of the crash. If the employee was doing something for you, even while mixing in a small personal detour, you are likely responsible. If the employee abandoned your work entirely, you are not. Every case comes down to the specific facts: the distance, time, and how clearly the employee separated from your business. As an employer, the best defense is clear policies, strict enforcement, and good insurance that covers both work and personal use of company vehicles. But understand that no policy can guarantee you will avoid liability when an employee makes a split-second decision to take a side trip.
