Could anyone resolve this for me please ?
As I understand the regulations from the VOSA site “off road driving” counts as “other work” (tacho to box with line through it symbol) and is not considered part of your daily driving.
I drive a quarry lorry. Can I therefore drive for 3 hours, Spend an hour loading in the quarry (off road) then drive for one and a half hours before taking my 45 ■■
Yup. Supposed to be changing but not heard anything.
There have been articles and ‘legal’ questions about this in the truck press during the last year (‘Trucking’ I think) and there was abit of a mixed response.
You could say that ‘off-road’ driving doesn’t count but the example that was given was you could be driving ‘off-road’ (big quarry tipper) for ‘lots’ of hours and then drive a vehicle on the road, without a break, for another 4½ hrs; a potential driving time of ‘lots’ (depending on things like the six hour rule etc etc).
The legal experts had said that in the event of an accident this would be viewed dimly, even if not quite illeagal!?!
IIRC there was also a question over the exact wording of the law, something along the lines of “…break of 45 mins after 4½hrs driving…” i.e. the wording doesn’t actually state that off-road driving doesn’t count towards overall driving time with regard to breaks.
Sorry if this is a bit vague but I am ‘on the road’ and don’t have access to my back-copies!!
Thanks Marcus,
Generally I would not be Off road for mor than an hour or so. Trouble is that it is comprosed of three or four movements (or maybe five or six) in around an hour so it is handy to be able to extract the whole rather than trying to identify the driving/POA/Resting elements