OPINION
{1} In this case, we adhere to the general “going and coming rule” in workers’ compensation law where oil field workers were killed or injured traveling home from a drilling rig located within commuting distance. We hold that exceptions to the rule, most notably the “traveling employee” exception, do not apply because Appellants were not traveling employees and because the evidence does not establish any other exception. Commuting was not required as an integral part of Appellants’ job duties for their employer. We affirm the Workers’ Compensation Judge’s dismissal of their case.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
{2} Workers Raymond Flores and Hector Brito (Appellants 1 ) were killed, and workers Harley Harkness and Angelo Apodaca were injured in a one-vehicle accident on their way home from work. Harkness is not a party to this appeal, nor is Apodaca, who brought no claim from the accident.
{3} Brito was driving the crew back to Roswell in his own vehicle at the time of the accident. The truck failed to negotiate a curve at a high speed, had a blow-out in its left rear tire, and rolled over a number of times, ejecting Harkness and Appellants. They were traveling at the end of their work day from the site of an oil drilling rig to Roswell, where they lived. The accident occurred after working hours and away from the work site. All were employees of McKay Oil Corporation (Employer).
{4} Harkness was the driller for the oil crew in which Appellants worked as roughnecks. They were employed to work on an oil rig operating in southeastern New Mexico, approximately thirty-seven miles from Roswell on the 2-p.m. to 10-p.m. shift. As a driller, Harkness was the supervisor of the crew. This drilling crew was paid an hourly wage beginning when they arrived at the work site and ending when they left. Although they characteristically traveled to and from the rig together, the crew members were responsible for their own transportation to and from the rig site. They did not meet at or go to any place associated with the company on their way to or from the rig. They were not paid for travel time or mileage to and from the drill site. As a driller, Harkness was paid a fifty-dollar daily per diem, which the driller has total discretion to spend as he pleases, for which he does not account to Employer, and which is not subject to any rules as to its application. The driller may, as happened in this case, agree to give his per diem to a crew member who actually drives the crew. The crew did not travel in a company vehicle, and at the time of the accident they were traveling in Brito’s truck. There were no requirements concerning crews traveling in any particular vehicle, though it was common for them to travel with the driller. Employer did not require or check for insurance or driver’s licenses of its drilling crew members.
{5} Appellants and Harkness filed for workers’ compensation benefits arising from the accident. Employer denied that the injuries had arisen out of the course and scope of their employment, asserting that they were traveling from work and that recovery was precluded by the going and coming rule. Below, Appellants also raised the issue of whether they were “traveling employees” as an exception to the going and coming rule. The Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) determined in a memorandum opinion that Appellants were not traveling employees and that, except for Harkness’s case, no exception to the going and coming rule applied to them.
{6} Subsequently, the WCJ entered findings of fact and conclusions of law, finding that the workers commuted daily from their homes to the work site and back and that the accident occurred after normal working hours and away from the workplace. The WCJ further found that no employee was required to travel with Brito to the work site and that each could have traveled in his own vehicle. The WCJ found that the accident was not in the course of employment, did not arise out of Appellants’ employment, and was subject to the going and coming rule. The WCJ dismissed Appellants’ claims with prejudice.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
{7} When considering an appeal from the Workers’ Compensation Administration, we engage in whole record review. Moya v. City of Albuquerque,
DISCUSSION
{8} Appellants realize that to prevail in this case, they must demonstrate that the circumstances of Flores’s and Brito’s deaths occurred outside of the domain of the going and coming rule. Accordingly, they assert that this accident is covered by the traveling employee exception to the rule. This exception would place workers driving home from their jobs within the scope and course of their employment by relating the means and reasons for their driving more directly to the benefit and purpose of their employment than to merely going to work and leaving it. We discuss the going and coming rule, the traveling employee exception, and our conclusion that Appellants’ activities fell well short of what would make them traveling employees.
The Going and Coming Rule
{9} The Workers’ Compensation Act (the Act), NMSA 1978, § 52-1-1 to -70 (1987, as amended through 2007), is designed to compensate workers for injury arising out of and in the course of employment. The going and coming rule is codified by the Act:
[I]njury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment ... shall not include injuries to any worker occurring while on his way to assume the duties of his employment or after leaving such duties, the proximate cause of which is not the employer’s negligence.
Section 52-1-19 (internal quotation marks omitted). As we recently stated, “an employee enroute [sic] to, or returning from, his place of employment, using his own vehicle[,] is not within the scope of his employment absent additional circumstances evidencing control by the employer at the time of the negligent act or omission of the employee.” Lessard v. Coronado Paint & Decorating Ctr., Inc.,
{10} “It is well settled that this requirement involves two separate inquiries[,]” whether the injury (1) “arose out of’ and (2) “in the course of ... employment____ In order to recover benefits, the worker must show that both requirements are satisfied.” Kloer v. Municipality of Las Vegas,
{11} To sum up, “[t]he general rule is that employment begins when the employee reaches his place of work and ends after he leaves his place of work.” Barton v. Las Cositas,
{12} Appellants point to our decision in Barton that recognized the possibility of compensation if the employer were negligent and in instances where an “employee’s work creates the necessity for the travel,” except for travel covered under the going and coming rule. Id.,
{13} Other exceptions that might confer coverage for injuries incurred going to or coming from work arise when the employment contract includes transportation to and from work, when the employee has no fixed place of work, if the employee is on special assignment for the employer, or when special circumstances demonstrate that the employee was furthering the business of the employer. See Peer v. Workmen’s Comp. Appeal Bd. (B &W Constr.),
{14} Since the going and coming rule exists to make everyday commuting between home and the workplace the employee’s business rather than the employer’s, some place of transition must exist where traveling away from the workplace is sufficiently related to the scope and purpose of an employee’s job duties that it brings traveling itself within the employment relationship for compensation purposes. Colorado has employed a framework of factors to determine whether an employee who is injured while going to or coming from work might come under an exception to the going and coming rule because of the employee’s travel. While not adopting these tests, we consider them to be highly illustrative of the factors that a court must consider when determining the extent to which travel to and from the work site is related to the core purpose of the employment, which is working in furtherance of the employer’s business. These factors include but are not limited to:
(1) whether the travel occurred during working hours, (2) whether the travel occurred on or off the employer’s premises, (3) whether the travel was contemplated by the employment contract, and (4) whether the obligations or conditions of employment created a “zone of special danger” out of which the injury arose. Whether meeting one of the variables is sufficient, by itself, to create a special circumstance warranting recovery depends upon whether the evidence supporting that variable demonstrates a causal connection between the employment and the injury such that the travel to and from work arises out of and in the course of employment.
Staff Adm’rs, Inc. v. Reynolds,
The Traveling Employee Exception
{15} A traveling employee is one “whose work entails travel away from the employer’s premises.” 2 Arthur Larson & Lex K. Larson, Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law § 25.01 (2006). Stated another way, a “traveling employee is one whose job requires travel from place to place or to a place away from a permanent residence or the employee’s place of business.” Ball-Foster Glass Container Co. v. Giovanelli,
{16} Generally, if the worker was not reasonably involved in fulfilling the duties of his employment at the time of his injury, he was not acting within the course of his employment. See Gutierrez,
{17} An example of the traveling employee is one whose job takes the employee on the road over such distances that require eating and sleeping away from home, all to fulfill the duties of employment and further the employer’s business. Id. Such persons are considered to be in the continuous employment of their employer, “day and night.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Such a traveling employee is exposed by his employment to hazards inherent to travel that he might otherwise have the option of avoiding. As such, “the hazards of the route become the hazards of the employment.” Id. ¶ 12 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In Chavez, a case that illustrates this example, a truck driver was in a motel room in the course of his trip because the law required him to take an eight-hour break. Id.,
Elements of the Exception: The Nature of the Employee’s Travel
{18} The increased risk to the employee of required travel away from home is the primary consideration in establishing the exception. It is not that the travel on the road creates the exception but that the job requires the employee to travel and does so under the “employer’s authority and control in assigning its employees to different work sites.” Ramirez,
Elements of the Exception: The Relationship of the Injury to the Employment
{19} Because the exception applies to activities within the course and scope of employment, the injury must “arise out of’ the worker’s employment, and we must consider the time, place, and circumstances of the injury’s occurrence. Id. ¶ 14. This means that an employee “was performing acts the employer instructed the [employee] to perform, acts incidental to the [employee]^ assigned duties, or acts which the [employee] had a common law or statutory duty to perform.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Additionally, we held in Ramirez that the activity giving rise to the injury must confer some direct benefit on the employer and that it must be reasonably related or incidental to employment. Id. ¶ 16. In such an instance, the employee’s time spent traveling is brought within the course and scope of his employment.
{20} Appellants urge that any employee becomes a “traveling employee” if the travel is “reasonably incidental to conditions and circumstances” of the employment. They cite Ramirez for this proposition and then quote the opinion as requiring the travel to be “an integral part of their jobs, ... differentiated from employees who commute daily from home to a single workplace [sic].” Id. ¶ 11 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Appellants erroneously seek an expanded view of “incidental” to eneompass “integral.” While employment is certainly “the cause of the workman’s journey between his home and the factory, it is generally taken for granted that workmen’s compensation was not intended to protect [an employee] against all the perils of that journey.” Id. ¶ 7 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Merely driving one’s self to work does not establish one of these exceptions. Such conduct is the essence of “going and coming” and does not arise from the work or from its course or scope. It is clear that to prevail on their claim that the traveling employee exception applies, Appellants’ driving must be something more essential to their work as a drilling team for Employer than mere commuting to and from work.
Injuries Did Not Arise Out of Appellants’ Employment Nor From Its Course and Scope
{21} The foregoing constitutes the framework for our evaluation of the WCJ’s conclusion that the going and coming rule precluded compensating Appellants as “traveling employees” as this term was used in Ramirez. We conclude that substantial evidence supports this legal conclusion and address the elements of the rule in turn.
1. Injuries Did Not Arise Out of the Employment
{22} It is necessary that both the risk of injury and the proximate cause of injury arise out of the employment to allow an award of compensation. See Section 52-1-19. Ordinarily, the hazards of traveling to and from work are not hazards of the job but hazards that are faced by all travelers that are unrelated to the employer’s business. Barrington v. Johnn Drilling Co.,
{23} The fact that Harkness turned over the $50 per diem that he received from Employer does not make Brito a traveling employee. Barrington,
{24} Here, Employer exerted no authority or control over Appellants either before or after work. Employer imposed no requirement on employees’ driving or on other employee conduct away from the drilling rig. Driver’s licenses and insurance were not checked or verified by Employer, and no one was assigned to drive anyone else. Each crew member was responsible for his own transportation to and from the rig. Appellants were discharging no duty to or request of Employer. ‘When work for the day has ended and the employee has left the premises of his employer to go to his home, the liability of the employer ceases[.]” Id. at 179,
2. The Workers Were Not In the Course and Scope of Their Employment
{25} The “course of employment” prong of the going and coming rule similarly precludes Appellants’ entitlement to compensation. This requirement “demands that the injury be shown to have arisen within the time and space boundaries of the employment, and in the course of an activity whose purpose is related to the employment.” 1 Larson, supra, § 12.01 (1999). Traveling employees’ work brings their travel within the boundaries of the employment relationship, expanding the circumstances in which compensation is available to them even though they are not working at the employer’s premises.
{26} Appellants’ employment began when they got to the rig and ended when they left. Barton,
{27} The evidence below shows that the rigs were located about thirty-seven miles from Appellants’ homes and that the two operating rigs were within a couple of miles of each other. In Ramirez, the rig was ninety miles away from the employees’ homes, and the employees lived away from home, with their employer paying for food, lodging, and travel to the work site. Ramirez,
{28} Appellants’ observation that Loffland Bros. v. Baca,
{29} Appellants cite a number of cases illustrating various exceptions to the going and coming rule which are not apposite here. Many are cases in which the employer specifically provided transportation as a benefit of the employment contract. See, e.g., Christian v. Nicor Drilling Co.,
{30} In citing Edens v. N.M. Health & Soc. Servs. Dep’t,
{31} Appellants have not established that their travel gave rise to an exception to Section 52-1-19 or to the common-law going and coming rule. In short, Appellants’ employment was not a contributing proximate cause of the accident since no circumstance necessarily arising from their employment presented them with any greater risk on the way home than that faced by normal commuters. It was not the lack of accommodations at the rig that caused them to travel home but rather the proximity of the rig to their residences. Their employment likewise did not require them to travel away from the location where they worked to perform other duties of their employment, and at the time of the accident they were not performing such other duties.
CONCLUSION
{32} We conclude that the WCJ had ample evidence in the record to support the conclusion that Appellants were not traveling employees as defined under Ramirez and that compensation for their deaths was precluded by the going and coming rule. The judgment of the WCJ was reasonably based upon substantial evidence that the drilling crew was commuting and that their driving was not essential to their job duties. We therefore affirm the decision of the Workers’ Compensation Judge.
{33} IT IS SO ORDERED.
Notes
. The Appellants concerned with Brito’s claims are actually the mothers of his young daughters, in whose names the claims were brought. Flores' claim was brought in his own name.
. The dual-purpose doctrine is suggested by this second circumstance, though in Ramirez we affirmed coverage for the workers as traveling employees.