The going-and-coming rule is one of the first things a comp practitioner learns and one of the most misapplied. The general statement, that injuries during an ordinary commute are not compensable, is correct as far as it goes. But the rule is riddled with exceptions, and a claim that looks dead on the going-and-coming defense is often very much alive once you develop how and why the worker was traveling.
The rule and its rationale
The premise is that the employment relationship is suspended during the ordinary commute. The worker chooses where to live, how to travel, and when to leave, and the risks of that trip are the same risks the general public faces. So an injury on the drive in, standing alone, does not arise out of and in the course of employment. That AOE/COE analysis is the whole ballgame, and the exceptions all work by showing that the travel was, in fact, part of the job rather than a personal choice incidental to it.
The exceptions that reopen the claim
The recognized exceptions are well developed, and most contested claims turn on one of them:
- Special mission. The worker was on an errand or task at the employer's request, outside ordinary duties, often at an unusual hour or place. The special assignment converts the trip into part of the work.
- Commercial traveler. An employee whose job requires travel is generally in the course of employment for the entire trip, including reasonable acts like eating and sleeping, because the travel itself is the service being performed.
- Required vehicle or business use. Where the employer requires the worker to bring a vehicle for use on the job, or the commute serves a business purpose, the drive falls inside coverage.
- Paid travel time. When the employer pays for travel time or covers travel expenses, that compensation is strong evidence the commute is part of the bargain.
- Special risk. An injury just outside the premises caused by a hazard peculiarly associated with the workplace can be compensable even short of the property line.
Proving the exception is a records exercise
Each of these exceptions lives or dies on documentation, so the investigation should be pointed. For a special mission, get the text, email, or dispatch record showing the employer directed the errand, and the timing that made it unusual. For the commercial-traveler theory, the job description, travel itinerary, and expense reports establish that travel was the work. For required-vehicle claims, look at whether the employer conditioned the job on vehicle availability or reimbursed mileage. Paid travel time shows up in the timekeeping and payroll records. The pattern is consistent: the employer's own paperwork usually proves the exception the employer's carrier is denying.
The going-and-coming defense is a label, not an analysis. The question is always whether the travel served the employer, and the answer is almost always in the employer's records rather than the worker's memory.
The special-risk line keeps moving
The special-risk and zone-of-danger exceptions have drawn recent appellate attention, with a California Court of Appeal decision narrowing when a hazard near the workplace entrance counts as employment-connected rather than a shared public risk. The lesson is not that the exception is gone, but that it is fact-bound. Tie the hazard specifically to conditions the employer created or controlled, a dangerous entrance, a required path across a parking area, rather than to the general danger of being near a road. Vague proximity arguments are losing; specific control arguments are holding.
Do not forget the third-party overlay
When the commute injury involves a negligent third party, a motorist, a property owner, the analysis does not end at compensability. A worker hurt in a covered travel status may have both a comp claim and a civil claim, which puts the file squarely in comp-versus-third-party coordination and raises the subrogation, credit, and offset questions that decide the net recovery. Those same auto-collision liability issues drive the third-party case, and the interplay between the comp lien and the civil settlement, along with the downstream lien and disbursement mechanics, needs to be mapped from the outset rather than bolted on at settlement.
Before you accept a going-and-coming denial, run the exceptions against the facts and pull the employer's records. The commute that looks personal often turns out to be exactly the kind of travel the system was built to cover.