Give Employees Freedom With Driver Privacy Switches

As a fleet manager, if your vehicles have trackers fitted, you are legally required to ensure that you are complying with all the relevant UK vehicle tracking laws.

One of the most important rules you must adhere to, is ensuring that you are only tracking your vehicles for business purposes. This can often cause complications when your business allows its drivers to use vehicles for both business and personal journeys.

Fortunately, Fleetsmart’s optional privacy switches offer the ultimate solution, helping you to avoid breaching GDPR laws.

To begin with, let’s take a look at these laws in more detail.

What is GDPR?

Vehicle tracking data in the UK is categorised as personal processing data. It is therefore governed by the General Data Protection Regulations 2018 (GDPR). The basic rules of GDPR state that any data collected must be:

Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes.
Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the proposals for which they are processed.
Accurate and, where necessary, up to date. Every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that is inaccurate is erased or rectified without delay.
Kept no longer than necessary, to fulfil its purpose.
Processed along the lines of the individual’s human rights.
Protected against unauthorised or unlawful use, loss or destruction.

As a fleet manager, you must be very careful with the type of data you are collecting with vehicle trackers. In order to comply with GDPR, you must only record information about business trips. If your driver also uses your vehicles for personal use, you could get in trouble with the law by tracking them during these hours.

What are Driver Privacy Switches?

At Fleetsmart, we offer an optional add-on to our vehicle tracking devices called Driver Privacy Switches.

Once fitted, a driver can flick the switch on and off to ensure only business journeys are being tracked and recorded.

By installing these switches, you can help to make sure that you are only processing the data that is relevant to your company and not unlawfully monitoring personal mileage that could put you at risk of being in breach of GDPR.

How to Ensure Your Driver Privacy Switches are Used Correctly

To ensure your drivers use their privacy switch correctly is to include it as part of your company vehicle policy, so drivers know exactly what is expected of them and you will be fully compliant with GDPR.

Your company vehicle policy should set our very clear rules to answer the following questions:

What is a company vehicle?
What is deemed business use of a company vehicle?
What is deemed personal use of a company vehicle (if permitted)?
What is considered business use of a private vehicle?

Please note: It is worth seeking advice from a legal expert when drawing up your company vehicle policy to ensure the above questions are answered in a way that complies with the relevant local laws and regulations.

How To Define Business Use and Private Use

According to a YouGov survey, over half (56%) of UK drivers are unaware of HMRC’s rules on reclaiming business mileage and the line between private and work-related journeys can become blurred easily.

According to HMRC, business mileage is any travel that employees make ‘wholly and exclusively’ for business purposes, such as:

Trips needed to complete work, e.g. deliveries.
Trips between two workplaces for the same job.
From an employees’ home to a client.
To a temporary workplace e.g. building site, client’s office.

HMRC has also stated that ordinary commuting journeys or any sort of private journey don’t constitute business mileage, even if the employee runs a work-related errand along the way.

Driver Privacy Switches at Fleetsmart

At Fleetsmart, we provide the ultimate vehicle tracking solution, including optional add-ons, such as our driver privacy switches, to help you manage your fleet more effectively, efficiently and in a way that complies with all relevant GDPR laws.

For more information about our tracking systems, get in touch with our helpful team today. Give us a call on 01942 314976.