Injuries during normal commutes have long been held to not be recordable on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) logs, but some travel injuries are recordable, according to an OSHA letter of interpretation.
Exceptions to the Rule
The letter identifies employee travel situations that are exceptions to the longstanding OSHA interpretation that injuries during an employee's normal commute to and from home and the workplace are not work-related, said Peter Spanos, an attorney with Taylor English in Atlanta.
"Normal commuting under the employee's control is not a work environment for purposes of OSHA," he said. OSHA's letter "points out that some employee travel is either done in the interest of the employer or as a condition of employment. Such travel is not considered commuting and is considered a work environment for OSHA purposes."
Any injuries resulting from an accident during an additional, nonroutine return to the workplace and back home again afterward would be work-related and recordable, said Phillip Russell, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Tampa, Fla. "What makes this interpretation problematic is that it expands the scope of what the standards consider to be work-related," he said. "Commuting is not work-related, even if the employee has to go back to work for some reason that is not part of the routine commute."
Spanos said other examples of travel in the interest of the employer or as a condition of employment that are thus recordable,...
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