Insurers fear "Zoom accidents" as motorists join meetings behind the wheel

Employers quickly need to make agreements on employees not joining online meetings from the car, or the number of "Zoom accidents" will soon skyrocket, insurer Interpolis said to AD.

Research by Interpolis found that half of the employers expect that online meetings are here to stay. And meeting software like Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams make this so easy that it is possible to participate by phone from the car. A fifth of SMEs said that staff regularly log in to a meeting from the vehicle.

"Don't do it," Interpolis said about joining an online meeting while driving. According to the insurer, a hands-free meeting is different from a hands-free call. A meeting requires a lot of concentration, and keeping track of who is talking is almost impossible without looking at your phone.

Now that people who worked from home are returning to the office again and the roads are returning to pre-pandemic traffic, Interpolis fears a boom in Zoom accidents. "We see the number of damage cases increasing again, while this is not yet the case with traffic intensity. That is worrying," Yvette Melis of Interpolis said to AD.