As an insurance agency that processes a considerable amount of commercial auto insurance applications, driver changes, and vehicle changes on a never-ending basis, we get asked often if we’ll run motor vehicle reports on drivers and/or potential drivers.
From our point of view, running MVR reports can create all sorts of issues, and in the insurance industry, issues usually means liability, and this is unlikely to be an exception. Potential liability to the prospective or current employee, the commercial auto insured, and potentially other third parties, not to mention potential regulatory risks when you’re operating and are licensed in well over a dozen states (and growing).
So, instead of simply advising clients to perform Google searches to find MVR providers, I thought it may be more helpful to perform a search and list what I think may be potentially worth investigating MVR providers as a quick search function.
Please please please note, non of the following has been vetted for quality or any criteria other than what my personal quick observation and opinion of the home page (and maybe little else) demonstrates to me. I have no preference, haven’t contacted any of them, and receive no compensation for listing them. In other words, I simply Googled “MVR providers” the same as you can do in order to find a list, and then quickly looked at the website to see if they may offer a service my clients may have an interest in exploring and learning more if it’s a good fit for their requirements.
Also, as a side note, I highly recommend making sure as an employer (regardless if the drivers will be employees or subcontractors) you’re following federal, state, and local laws regarding accessing and using MVR report information. You don’t want to have a driver sue you for acting outside of some privacy or other regulation and/or law regarding the reports. Motor vehicle reports are potentially protected information akin to medical, financial, and other private information in any given jurisdiction. This seems odd, given the United States has an open court system where daylight and transparency is meant to keep things honest and cost efficient, at least in theory, yet the same public information in a MVR report may be considered confidential. Doesn’t make sense to me, and it doesn’t matter if I agree with every single rule or not, I’m just calling it as I see ’em.
Ok, that’s likely enough CYA and here’s some motor vehicle report providers you may wish to investigate for your MVR requirements.
mvrcheck.com/mvr-pricing/
www.imvrs.com/Products.htm
risk.lexisnexis.com/products/motor-vehicle-records
intellicorp.net/marketing/Products/Driving-Records-(MVRs)
As an employer, should you get an MVR report on prospective employees?
I think you should, and while you want to remain within the law doing so, you may increase your risk exposure if you don’t pull MVR reports before allowing someone behind the wheel. As an employer, you have what’s known as vicarious liability, a legal concept that holds an employer responsible for the actions of employees. This isn’t much different than vicarious liability transferred to parents for their minor (and sometimes adult) children. Society has (rightly in my opinion) deemed employees as a whole, unable to adequately protect victims for breaches of duty when performing their jobs. Plus, if employers aren’t held accountable, even if the accountability becomes truly twisted, employers will have no incentive to dial in their rogue employees.
Where I’m going with this is if you as an employer hire a driver with a history of carelessness or disobedience of the law when a reasonable employer would otherwise deem the potential driver as “too risky,” you can expect to have not only vicarious liability, albeit also have liability under a theory of breaching your duty in “ineffective hiring, training, and supervision” of your staff, triggering a tougher time “getting out of a mouse trap,” so I always state when asked to hire only the best employees and perform an extensive due diligence process in hiring.