Micro movements.
Urban legend that dvsa can detect these? If dvsa can detect then why don’t they flag up on tachomaster?
Or is it made up bull as modern day tacho heads count in calendar minutes.
Discuss
Do a V diagram print out, it will show your speed trace like a paper chart type.
It might be the stuff of urban legends but the capability exists. However, the actual doing it is a little more complicated.
Basically you need to download the VU digital speed file. In digital tachograph terms this is a massive file and in the early days used to take nearly an hour to achieve. Now the process can be achieved in a few minutes due to the changes in the legislation covering download protocols. In the ‘speed file’ the VU will store the vehicle speed in whole Km/h for every second of a calendar minute (00 seconds to 59 seconds) that a value was detected. Any seconds where no speed was detected will be recorded as 0 Km/h. A minute where no speed is recorded, all values are zero will simply not be recorded, so your 45 minute break, where the vehicle was stationary, will not appear in the speed file. It is quite possible to compare the speed file against the driver or vehicle activity file and get the programme to highlight any anomalies where the activity file shows break/rest and the speed file shows movement. Sure this was being done some years ago by the Met Commercial Vehicle Units. It’s quite likely the the DVSA enforcement software contains a similar function. However, bear in mind that you have to download the speed file and that will be impossible if drivers change vehicles on a daily basis and the ‘offence’ didn’t happen on the day of the check.
The other consideration is that the European legislation defines what driving is, put simply it is what the VU records it as. So, if you have a minute with only a few seconds of movement in it (less than 30) then the VU will assign that minute to the activity required by the mode switch position; Break/rest, work or availability. From a legal point of view the enforcement bodies may be on unsafe ground in Court trying to say that you were driving when the Type Approved, calibrated and required instrument shows otherwise. There might be exceptions in the case of fatal incidents where there is a question regarding driver inattention due to fatigue but that’s a different matter. It’s all a bit overkill for checking a drivers’ 45 minute break at a standard roadside check.
I seem to recall a device being marketed a few years back that exploited this feature of later digital tachographs and informed drivers of when they could move a vehicle and warned them when it had to be stationary. That seems to have disappeared off the market now.
The V trace diagram printout from the VU isn’t really going to help. The original printout was simply bands of speeds eg; 10 to 20 Km/h and the number of minutes that vehicle had been in the speed range in the 24 hour period starting at 00:00 hrs and ending at 24:00 hrs. The later speed trace diagram simply doesn’t have the resolution on it to show a few Km/h for a few seconds where roughly 12 inches of printout represents a 24 hour time record. Although such printouts were great for increasing the sale of printer paper!
So, short answer for the RDC waiting room is ‘Yes’ it can be done but it is of little real merit in the vast majority of cases.
Now shall we re-ignite the one about DVSA can download your tacho whilst driving next to you via Bluetooth?