First at all I hope my English will be enough to make this understandable, otherwise my apologies for it.
Currently I’m developping a program (TachoGuard) to control all our times (working, driving, resting) and it’s in a very advanced stage, but I wanted to check a few scenarios and your help will be more than welcome.
The first scenario is as follows:
You drive for some time and then you stop for more than one hour break, let’s say even you stop for 6 hours. It is defined in your duty as P o A.
Q1.- Could this P o A time to be used too as a partial daily rest to be added to a final period of 8 hours?, of course I know it must be as a max of 4 hours.
Q1.1- If so, do you need to write something on back of your tacho?
Second scenario will be same as before, but this time you have nothing in your duty about to be considered as P o A, however you still know you will have that break so you can apply for it to be a P o A, but you decide to apply for a normal break time:
Q2.- Same as Q1 but just as normal break time instead P o A.
Nomada:
You drive for some time and then you stop for more than one hour break, let’s say even you stop for 6 hours. It is defined in your duty as P o A.
Q1.- Could this P o A time to be used too as a partial daily rest to be added to a final period of 8 hours?, of course I know it must be as a max of 4 hours.
No, as POA and breaks are not the same thing. It’s either a POA (usually recorded using the box with a line through it on the tacho) or a break (the bed symbol on the tacho). Only the latter can count towards the “long breaks” which enable you to do what is commonly known as a “split shift”.
Thanks for your answer. As for your words I understand only breaks for one hour or more can be used as splith shift, but not PoA.
So:
Q1. NO
Q1.1. N/A
Q2. YES
and what about Q2.1?
And for my understanding, when it happens that the break is for 4 hours or more then the duty time can spread to 16 hours. However the VOSA booklet estates on Q.16:
Minimum daily rest period: 8 consecutive hours when taken as one of 2 or 3 separate periods (a minimum of 1 hour) totalling 12 hours of rest in any 24 hour period.
And then Spreadover: 12 hours work (inc breaks)
That means for me that when one of those periods happen we need to write something on the back to know it was not a Break but a Split Shift or Rest.
And complicating a little more the scenario, could it apply too then to the case of double manned vehicles? I.e. some case happens to me travelling abroad driving (double manned) a coach:
Being stopped in countries borders by custom officers a passenger was found carrying cannabis. Legal procedures started and drivers switched to break mode as nothing was with us.
After a long break of 6 hours the passenger was released and then we carry on the trip. Could this unexpected long break to be considered as non-duty time?
Sorry to be a pain. Computers don’t understand about laws, but 1 and 0 (YES/NO) and I need this very clear before to put in the algorithm.
As Repton has said, you can not decide to call a P.o.A to rest/break later on in the day…
The DETR booklet , section 15 says,
Alternatively, 12 hours daily rest may be taken in two or three periods, the last of
which must be at least 8 consecutive hours, and all of which must be at least one
hour.
So you can have, a 4 hr break and 8hrs daily rest,
or 2hrs plus 2hrs and 8hrs,
or 1hr plus 3hrs and 8hrs, or any combination of over 1hr plus another break totalling 4 hrs and then an 8 hr daily rest period.
This is pretty clear from the first 2 example charts.
In the 3rd example chart touches on the further implications of this. It gives the example of 1:30hr plus 2hrs and 8:30 daily rest, totalling 12 hrs.
What would also work is 1, or 2 breaks of over an hour each, totalling 3 hrs and 9 hours daily rest.
Or 1 or 2 breaks totalling 2 hours and a daily rest of 10hrs.
I’ve used complete hours for simplicity, but provided the total of the rest periods in the day add up to 12 hours, then any combination works. However, I believe that this is all going to be redundant in a few months time. The facility to split your daily rest in this way is going to be stopped when the new drivers hours rules come into force. Unless the politicians change their minds, unless they have already and I didn’t hear about it.
Simon:
The facility to split your daily rest in this way is going to be stopped when the new drivers hours rules come into force.
Not stopped but altered. From April 2007 you will no longer be able to split your daily rest into three parts. From then you can only split it into two, with the first part not less than three hours and the second not less than nine.
Something of a silly question, but in the real world what is the difference between POA and Rest ?
For instance if I work 13 hours and my tacho shows 9h driving 1.30 rest and 2.30 POA what would the difference be from 9h driving and 4h rest ?
As far as I am aware both are netable from my total hours to give 9h contribution to my weekly working hours.
(I am asking as I know some of our drivers take the option of leaving the tacho on rest all day and it seems to be an easy option)
The difference Loggo, is that in option 1, where you have 1:30 break and 2:30 PoA, if you have 9 hours off to get an early start in the morning, you still have rest time to pay back for your shortened overnight rest.
In option 2, where you have had 4 hrs on break, you could take 8 hrs rest, have nothing to pay back and be away even earlier (if you should choose to accept that mission ).
Thanks Simon - I seldom exceed 12 hours so tend not to venture into "9 hours rest territory ", but doesn’t that make option 2 (i.e put all your PoA as break) the better way to go at all times ?
Loggo:
Thanks Simon - I seldom exceed 12 hours so tend not to venture into "9 hours rest territory ", but doesn’t that make option 2 (i.e put all your PoA as break) the better way to go at all times ?
It depends. Some employers/agencies pay POA but don’t pay breaks. In that case you only want to take 45min of breaks in a day and book the rest as POA. If your employer only deducts 45min regardless of how many breaks you’ve had then book it all as break. The only other thing is that taking it all as break sometimes isn’t ideal for me as I sometimes don’t want to take a full 45 early in the day so I’ll sometimes take 30 break and then some POA and then the last 15min break later on which if I had taken the whole lot at the start as break would have made me illegal (stupid rules). If that didn’t make any sense to you let me give you an example:
This one is legal:
Drive 1h
Break 30min
POA 30min
Drive 3h
Break 15min
Drive 3h
Now if I book the POA as a break instead, it’s no longer legal:
Drive 1h
Break 1h
Drive 3h
Break 15min
Drive 3h
In this case I would be 1.5h over on my second 4.5h driving segment.
).
