Hi all, so I have been an idiot.
Last week I ran out of working hours (still plenty of driving hours left) a few miles away from base. I called them and said it would be close getting home, but they weren’t going to come and get me.
I pulled over, yanked the tacho and drove home. About 15 minutes or less of driving. I’ve had the disciplinary at work already, and I got a warning for it. I am grateful not to be sacked, but what’s going to happen if DVSA look into this? It’s a first offence…
I would have left tacho in and then done an explanation printout for the one off 15 minutes
As long as the daily rest was taken then I cannot see authorities being that interested as a one off
DAFty113:
Hi all, so I have been an idiot.Last week I ran out of working hours (still plenty of driving hours left) a few miles away from base. I called them and said it would be close getting home, but they weren’t going to come and get me.
I pulled over, yanked the tacho and drove home. About 15 minutes or less of driving. I’ve had the disciplinary at work already, and I got a warning for it. I am grateful not to be sacked, but what’s going to happen if DVSA look into this? It’s a first offence…
The max penalty is unlikely.
Nobody wants to pay for you to have two years in prison.
smithbowyerclarke.co.uk/ser … -can-help/
But it clearly is not a case of forgetting to put a card in, misinterpretation of domestic rules, nor an emergency.
Do you have years of faultless driving behind you? An aberration of a good record.
Is this (you say, your first offence) after only a few days driving trucks? The way you’re headed.
Keep your nose spotlessly clean, for a couple of years, hope your company keeps it’s nose equally clean, and it may never be seen. But that isn’t too likely.
ROG:
I would have left tacho in and then done an explanation printout for the one off 15 minutes
As long as the daily rest was taken then I cannot see authorities being that interested as a one off
One off 15min over spreadover is not a hanging offence, agreed.
Tacho fraud is much more serious.
The forum simpleton did the same thing. Cost him the thick end of a grand iirc.
Never ever try and cheat the DVSA crews, which by pulling the card you have tried to do, they are far from thick or stupid and don’t take kindly to be assumed t or s.
Sometimes things go wrong, you miscalculate enter the wrong mode go the wrong way miss a junction and make a complete pigs ear of things, when it happens do your print outs with the truth written on the back, so long as this isn’t regular behaviour in almost all cases the DVSA people can see what’s happened confirms your explanation and they’ll be fine.
example, due to M11 blow out with really unusual size trailer tyres meaning ATS fitter had to drive over half east anglia to find the correct tyre i ended up doing an 18 hour shift by the time i finally got parked up, wrote of back of tacho the reasons, following week got pulled for a weight check, course they had my tachos, told them there was a bad one from last week, no trouble from them at all, they could see where i had slowed up trying to fit in already full A14 laybys and more importantly this wasn’t typical right up to the last minute work pattern.
More annoying you missed out trousering an easy night out payment, should have parked up and got a lift home and back again in the morning.
Company are not allowed to come and get you, they could et in hot water for doing so, but nothing to stop you doing what you want in your rest period away from the vehicle.
15 minutes…
From the yard?
Leave the card in and show it.
Abandon it in a lay-by and get the wife to collect you.
Have a night out, run in and go home for the day on full pay.
Yes, I should have left the card in… I’ve been doing this 4 years but I’ve never had a working time issue before, and never pulled the card before. I still don’t really understand why it didn’t give me to the end of my shift, bit hey ho.
I guess I need to hope they don’t get their teeth into anyone on site for the next year or so…
DAFty113:
Yes, I should have left the card in… I’ve been doing this 4 years but I’ve never had a working time issue before, and never pulled the card before. I still don’t really understand why it didn’t give me to the end of my shift, bit hey ho.I guess I need to hope they don’t get their teeth into anyone on site for the next year or so…
So, are you saying you thought you had loads of time left, but the tacho started flashing s 15min warning?
It won’t help with the error in pulling the card, but might help you avoid a similar situation arising.
If this was simply a Working Time issue (ie you had reached 60 hours of working) then DVSA wouldn’t have been bothered about it in the slightest anyway.
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Yes I thought I’d just done a 24 hour gap day to night shift, but I must have put the card in too early, making it 6 days straight. I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d have known.
I wasn’t thinking straight, and I know a couple other drivers who pulled and drove in from a few towns over. They didn’t get caught, I did.
Wtf possessed you to do that? 
There’s blagging, there’s taking a chance,.and there’s taking the ■■■■…yours is the latter.
They’ll deffo take a dim view if DVSA see it…end of.
Not preaching either, but even I who thinks half of these tacho rules are ■■■■ stupid and over complicated, would not even do that.
If it had been me as a day man, park up, ring wife, mate, or son, to collect me and get paid a night out…or just cab it.
Think yourself lucky you didn’t experience a major ■■■■ up scenario with no card,.as it would be porridge brekkie for 18 months or so.
DAFty113:
I wasn’t thinking straight, and I know a couple other drivers who pulled and drove in from a few towns over. They didn’t get caught, I did.
This has to be a wind up . Not just one idiot in the o/p but an admission that other’s at the same company run bent. Running without a card in is fraud. The employer ( if they exist ) would loose their operator’s license.
I’m with Robroy on this one , that 15 minutes with no card in may have ended up badly if someone was killed, I know it sounds dramatic, but I wouldn’t want to explain what happened to a Crown Court Judge when your barrister Q.C has said, pack a small bag as you won’t be coming home after the trial and sentencing .
If the employer didn’t want to rescue you , the truck would have stayed there and not moved until having 9 or 11 hours daily rest.
I’m guessing you didn’t have any night out gear or this was an unplanned night out which is not pleasant with no sleeping bag/duvet and toiletries and sleeping in your uniform to keep warm with a broken night heater .
There are some odd rules about being rescued and working time , of which I am not sure about but guess it’s whether it’s a work vehicle picking you up or private vehicle, then if you drive the work vehicle back to base , how to record working time on a manual entry the next day .
And can you drive the work vehicle back if you have gone over duty/work time ?
^^^^^^
If I was a dayman I’d carry basics for unplanned nights out.
Even if you’re being arsey about ‘no nights out’ you can not always be picked up, …maybe get blocked in with snow etc, or some equal unforseen circumstance.
Does not make sense to me not to be prepared.
Ironically it could take you more than the 15 minutes over to find somewhere to park up for a night/day out.
While it doesn’t matter how bad it gets creating a dodgy record to hide it will only make matters much worse.Especially in this case that makes even less sense.
Better to make a manual entry stating that base was closer at that point than finding safe parking in time for a daily rest period.
The DVSA would deffo be thinking what else is he trying to hide to go to all the trouble of making a dodgy record for the sake of 15 minutes.
Running out of driving time is easier than running out of duty time in that regard.The can of worms involved in the latter generally means that the premise needs to be on a forced night/day out and sorted in good time to find parking.Don’t even bother with asking the firm to run out to rescue you in that case.
While running out of driving time generally means how far from base and how much duty time remaining to make the call between park up for a daily rest period or be rescued.
The days of turning a blind eye by the authorities are now long gone but back in the 1990’s I used to write on the back of the now extinct paper analog tacho discs , in French as I was transiting France; I was looking for a shower/hot meal/decent parking if going over hours by a few minutes just to cover myself from any fines .
And luckily didn’t get fines as the Gendarmerie were impressed by my French.And due to snow and road closures I also wrote the reason for over hours and I got stopped by a French ministry of transport inspector who decided to check all my tachos and ADR kit and after an hour I was let free .
You only have to look up Bath tipper crash and how they jailed the mechanic and boss for falsifying records and Boyle transport Ireland whose owners got porridge and recently Mansell Davies Wales with maintenance timing records for inspections.
Tarmaceater:
There are some odd rules about being rescued and working time , of which I am not sure about but guess it’s whether it’s a work vehicle picking you up or private vehicle, then if you drive the work vehicle back to base ,
Nothing odd about it (and it’s nothing to do with Working Time). The rule is simply that travel to or from a vehicle that is away from base cannot be counted as Rest. As a result, once you have reached 15 (or 13 if Reduced Rest is not available) hours “on duty” then you cannot legally be “rescued”.
robroy:
^^^^^^
If I was a dayman I’d carry basics for unplanned nights out.
Even if you’re being arsey about ‘no nights out’ you can not always be picked up, …maybe get blocked in with snow etc, or some equal unforseen circumstance.Does not make sense to me not to be prepared.
Yes about carrying a bag for emergency but if you were 15 minutes from base what would you do
I would just keep on driving for the sake of 15 minutes and take whatever is the penalty, he did ring them
I wonder how, having told you that they won’t collect you, the company are going to feel when they arrive to collect the vehicle and find it clamped? 