Is an Accident During Commute Covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act?

Please clarify that one of our employees has started from his house for duty in his own vehicle. On the way to the site, he met with an accident (OUTSIDE THE PLANT / PREMISES), resulting in a fractured and damaged right leg.

Could you please confirm if this incident is covered under the Workmen's Compensation Act or not?

Regards

Compensation for Injury During Employment

Compensation is payable for injury during and in the course of employment. Employment is deemed to start when the employee reaches the place of work. In the case of travel by one's own means, compensation will not be payable for injury on the way to work.

There are court decisions on this matter that you can find on Google.

Traffic Accident and Employer Liability

A traffic accident has no causal connection with the duties assigned to the injured employee. The employee was in his vehicle while heading to the workplace. There is no proximate cause between the nature of employment and the accident, which can be associated with the hazards of the work being carried out by the employee. Therefore, there is no liability for the employer to compensate the employee for any personal accident caused to him.

This will support your case, I think.

General Manager, B. E. S. T. Undertaking, Bombay v. Mrs. Agnes

In this case, a public utility transport service run by the Bombay Municipal Corporation owned a number of buses and employed a staff, including bus drivers, for conducting the service. The deceased driver finished his work for the day. After leaving the bus in the depot, he boarded another bus to go to his residence. The bus collided with a parked lorry. As a result of the collision, he was thrown out onto the road and got injured. Later, he died in the hospital. His widow filed an application in the Court of the Commissioner for compensation.

The Supreme Court stated that, in view of the long distances to be covered by the employees, the Corporation, as a condition of service, provides a bus for collecting all the drivers from their houses so that they may reach their depots in time and to take them back after the day's work. They are given that facility as a right because the efficiency of the service demands it. The Court observed that:

“The employment does not necessarily end when the 'down tool' signal is given or when the workman leaves the actual workshop where he is working. There is a notional extension at both the entry and exit by time and space. The scope of such extension must necessarily depend on the circumstances of a given case. The doctrine of notional extension of employment developed in the context of specific workshops, factories, or harbors equally applies to such a bus service provided to employees to get to the job on time and reach their home without further strain, contributing to their overall efficiency. The bus service is used as a privilege and matter of right. Their workplace gets notionally extended by virtue of this service.”

The Supreme Court held that when a driver, when going home from the depot or coming to the depot, uses the bus, any accident that happens to him is an accident in the course of his employment.

I have a strong feeling that the Mrs. Agnes case is more wrongly interpreted than correctly understood. The Supreme Court, in notionally extending the liability, held that under the Rules of BEST, a bus driver is given the facility in his capacity as its driver to travel in any bus belonging to the undertaking, with a clear intention to enable the driver to keep up punctuality and to discharge his onerous obligations. It is given to him not as a grace but as a right because the efficiency of the service demands it. Therefore, the right of a bus driver to travel in the bus in order to discharge his duties punctually and efficiently was a condition of his service, and there was an implied obligation on his part to travel in the said buses as a part of his duty.

The Supreme Court also made it clear that while in the case of a factory, the premises of the employer which gives ingress or egress to the factory is a limited one, in the case of a city transport service, by analogy, the entire fleet of buses forming the service would be the "Premises". So the requirement of the accident happening in the notionally extended employment would be limited to the premises, and the employer cannot be made liable for a traffic accident occurring anywhere on the way unless the employee was at the accident spot in discharge of duty.