The Off Switch is a small card and app that helps you keep phones from cutting across driving, safety, and shift boundaries, while still giving drivers and supervisors the tools they need for navigation, dispatch, and emergencies.
On this page, you’ll see how it fits into a typical shift, routines you can roll out across different fleets, and what operations and safety leads usually notice after a pilot.
The Off Switch
× Fleets & Driver-Based Teams
What you’re trying to do
If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place.
1. Reduce distraction-related risks for people who drive for work, without adding more surveillance.
2. Turn your mobile phone policy into simple, repeatable behaviours at the start, middle, and end of a shift.
3. Keep navigation, dispatch, and emergency contact available, while cutting out non-essential noise.
4. Support supervisors, managers, and team leaders to meet health and safety and road-risk duties around mobile devices.
5. Give drivers clearer “off-duty” time so messages and apps do not follow them into every evening and weekend.
Where it starts to go wrong
The issue is rarely that people “do not care about safety.” The issue is that phones, apps, and expectations are built around constant connection, and driving for work fits within that reality.
1. On the road, non-essential notifications keep popping up while vehicles are moving, tempting glances or taps that lengthen reaction times and increase crash risk. “Emergency use only” policies are hard to police from the cab, and near misses linked to distraction rarely make it into formal reporting. Hands-free is treated as “safe enough,” even though evidence shows it still increases collision risk compared with not calling at all.
2. Around the edges of the day, drivers try to catch up on messages in lay-bys, queues, and drop-off zones, which can still breach mobile phone law if the engine is on or the vehicle is in live traffic. Different teams interpret “no phone use while driving” differently, leading to pockets of risky behaviour and mixed messages across the operation.
3. For safety, operations, and HR, health and safety leads know HSE expects mobile phone risks to be managed like any other work risk, but they rely on policy documents and toolbox talks with no physical prompt in the cab. Incidents involving possible distraction are stressful to investigate and can expose gaps between written policy and everyday practice, including potential liability for employers who require or encourage calls while driving.
4. For driver wellbeing and retention, constant contact from dispatch, customers, and personal apps turns every shift into an always-on experience. After a long day on the road, drivers are still reachable for “quick” follow-ups, schedule changes, and work chat messages, which erodes rest and recovery time.
How The Off Switch helps
Why it makes sense
Off Switch complements rather than replaces your existing mobile phone and driving policy. It helps you turn “no non-essential phone use while driving” into a simple ritual at the start of every journey and at key transition points in the shift. Research repeatedly links mobile phone distraction to increased crash risk and serious injuries. Reducing opportunities to interact with non-essential apps while a vehicle is moving supports the core safety goal of keeping eyes, hands, and attention on the road. Off Switch is privacy-first, using on-device controls rather than centralised tracking, helping organisations build safer routines without creating a sense of surveillance in the cab.
How it fits into your day
Before the vehicle moves, drivers tap their iPhone on an Off Switch card mounted in the cab. Off Mode for driving activates, muting chosen apps and notifications while keeping navigation, dispatch, and emergency channels available, in line with your policy and the law. There is no need to touch the phone again while driving. During work stops at depots, loading bays, and layovers, drivers can have separate modes for tasks that need focus, such as paperwork or load checks, and modes that allow short personal breaks, all within your agreed-upon rules. At the end of the shift, an off-duty mode helps drivers step away from work notifications once vehicles are parked and keys are returned, while keeping personal contacts available. This supports right-to-disconnect style thinking that is emerging across UK workplaces.
How it feels over time
The routine of “tap in before moving off, tap out when parked” becomes part of the start and end-of-shift checks rather than an extra layer of admin. Drivers feel treated as adults, with a tool that helps them stick to the rules without more monitoring. Safety, HR, and fleet teams can point to a concrete, environment-level control supporting their driving-for-work risk assessment, not just another slide in an induction deck.
Routines that work well for fleets and driver-based teams
Driving mode at start of shift
Who: Van, HGV, bus, coach, and company car drivers.
When: Before starting the engine, as part of vehicle walk-around and cab checks.
What stays off: Social media, shopping, games, non-essential messaging, personal email, and other non-work apps.
What stays on: Navigation, telematics or electronic record of duty systems, dispatch tools, hands-free calling for emergencies or agreed business-critical calls in line with policy.
How it helps: Builds a visible, physical step into the pre-drive checklist that backs up your phone policy and reduces temptation to respond to every ping in traffic.
Loading bay and depot focus mode
Who: Delivery drivers, HGV drivers, service engineers, and depot staff who switch between driving, paperwork, and loading.
When: While loading, unloading, checking manifests, or completing safety checks in yards and depots.
What stays off: Socials, non-urgent messaging, streaming, and any app that pulls attention away from vehicles and plant moving nearby.
What stays on: Work apps for scanning, checklists, and communication with depot staff, plus emergency contact routes.
How it helps: Reduces distraction in high-risk environments where vehicles and people move together, supporting your wider yard safety procedures.
Break and layover reset
Who: Long-distance and multi-drop drivers who take mandated breaks.
When: During legally required rest breaks, layovers, and meal breaks when the vehicle is safely parked.
What stays off: Work email, shift-management apps, and non-essential alerts that drag people back into “work brain.”
What stays on: Personal messaging, calls, and entertainment apps drivers choose for rest, within your broader policies.
How it helps: Protects rest as actual rest, which supports alertness for the next driving block and aligns with health and safety guidance on managing fatigue.
Supervisor and dispatch focus windows
Who: Fleet managers, controllers, and dispatchers who also have to concentrate on planning and incident response.
When: During route planning, incident triage, and conversations with insurers or regulators.
What stays off: Non-urgent messaging, social media, and background notifications that fragment attention.
What stays on: Core fleet systems, telematics dashboards, phone lines, and agreed communication channels.
How it helps: Makes space for clear thinking in roles where a single missed detail in a call or report can have significant operational or legal consequences.
Off-duty boundary mode
Who: All drivers and managers with work apps on personal phones.
When: After the last job of the day, on rest days, and during holidays.
What stays off: Work email, rota apps, and messaging channels that pull people back into work on their own time.
What stays on: Personal contacts, maps, music, and anything else that supports life outside work.
How it helps: Gives people a simple way to stop “just checking” work apps in the evening, supporting recovery, work-life balance, and long-term retention.
Common questions
Will this encourage drivers to touch their phones more?
No. Off Switch is designed so drivers set their mode before the vehicle moves, then leave the phone alone. You decide how and where the cards are positioned and how drivers are trained, so there is no need to handle the phone while driving. This supports, rather than undermines, existing law and policy around mobile phones and driving.
How does this fit with our existing mobile phone and driving policy?
Off Switch does not replace your policy. It turns it into a simple physical cue. You keep your rules about when phones can be used, what counts as essential, and the consequences. Off Switch simply makes it easier for people to live those rules in real time, by muting the apps that do not belong in the cab.
Does this replace our telematics or in-cab tech?
No. Telematics, camera systems, and in-cab devices remain your primary tools for monitoring driving behaviour and vehicle status. Off Switch sits alongside them. It handles one specific piece of the puzzle: helping drivers and managers reduce non-essential phone use and notifications around driving and loading.
What about personal phones versus company phones?
Off Switch works on the phones people already carry. Your organisation decides whether it is used only on company-issued devices or whether people can use it on personal phones for work as well. Because Off Switch is privacy-first and does not track usage for core features, it helps you offer a practical tool without feeling intrusive.
What if drivers ignore it?
No tool can replace culture. That said, Off Switch gives you:
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A visible prompt in the cab
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A shared language for coaching (“Let us tap into driving mode before we set off”)
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A way to weave phone habits into existing training, audits, and check rides
It becomes part of “how we do things here,” rather than another app that only exists in a policy document.