Virginia: Failure to Wear Seatbelt Was Willful Misconduct on Part of Bus Driver

The failure of a Virginia bus driver to lock and wear his seatbelt upon picking up passengers—he later sustained serious injuries when his vehicle was struck from behind, careened down a guardrail, and then flipped—constituted willful misconduct under Va. Code § 65.2-306, since the evidence showed that he did not sustain the injuries while in the driver’s seat, but only after being ejected from the vehicle, held a state appellate court. The driver acknowledged that he was aware of the employer’s safety policy requiring seatbelt use at all times. That acknowledgement, coupled with the fact that the proximate cause of the driver’s injuries was his failure to use the seatbelt, meant he was disqualified from receiving workers’ compensation benefits.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Mailloux v. American Transp., 2018 Va. App. LEXIS 260 (Oct. 9, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 34.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see