First of all sorry if this is in wrong section…
Read the new VOSA drivers hours & Tachographs booklet… Anyways it states that if a lorry with digi tacho is driven with no card in it will record this in the VU to state this…
What I am wandering is what happens when I ut my card in to start a shift??
Reason I am asking is the lorries get shipped to/from Scotland/Ireland by the shunters and when they come off the boat we are literally into them within 15mins, and being NEW to teh digi tacho scene dont know wether it will make infrigments on my card??
Just a quick ques as going out tomoro for 1st time in one…
PS:- Were getting trained on these saturday but just curious…
Cheers,
J.
The times it was driven without a card in are recorded and these times will not match when your card is in, the events will also not get written to your card.
Cool… Weve just handed back a load of manual tacho lorries and got 6 new digi ones but were not in the know yet, hopefully will be by saturday 
A friend was saying, wether tru or not, that if lorry is drove without a card it will auto mark this as an infrigment on the next persons card/printout, whcih i thought wouldnt be too fair…
So where does it get saved stating it has been drove without a card on? And how does the employer and/or vosa find this out?
I also think that the garage brought the lorries down on trade plates as there was no tacho rolls on lorries as we had to supply our own, well teh company had to…
scottishcruiser:
So where does it get saved stating it has been drove without a card on? And how does the employer and/or vosa find this out?
It gets recorded to the digital tacho unit and the employer would find out when he downloads the data from it, as he must do. VOSA would find out by either checking the data in the unit itself or by checking the data downloaded by the company.
Does employer put the company card into each lorry digi unit itself as well as d/l the data from each individuals digi tacho cards??
If so, I take it this is to make sure everything adds up mileage wise etc?
scottishcruiser:
Does employer put the company card into each lorry digi unit itself as well as d/l the data from each individuals digi tacho cards??
Yes they do, or at least they should.
well the company, small that is with 6 units, are all going to get trained on sat inc the boss whose spent a small fortune to get someone in to do this…
Hopefully we’ll all be fully trained digi tacho drivers :D:d 
Thats somthing i was wondering about not that it being driven without a card would be put on my card.
But in one place i work they use a unit as a shunter vehicle to move trailers about the yard. The shunter doesent have a HGV licence and so doesent drive the vehicle on the road.
He just uses which ever vehicle is available so going to be loads of times when that vehicles is displaying driving without a card.
Is that acceptable to VOSA ? Also the “Out of Scope” entry is that relevent to a vehicle being used on private land by someone who isnt driving on the roads so therefor not under tachograph rules or is that for out of EU regulation countries.
Seems as if were in same boat pal… Going by coffees answer itll show on the company card that there was no card inserted when drove and I guess if it was ever questioned then you would need to have proof of some sort that the trucks are being drove ligitemately (sp) without a card…
Im in that situation with the lorries going to/from scotland/ireland by the shunters… not putting loads of km’s on but every km counts when vosa is involved…
AFAIK, it’s legal for the truck to be used off-road without a tacho or card as long as the driver never goes on-road during the shift.
However, the company would be wise to cover their backsides and keep a log of which vehicles the shunter has been using for when VOSA come knocking. If VOSA can see that the company are keeping decent logs (name, date, time, start mileage, finish mileage, signature), then they’ll probably be happy. If the company provide no records and just say “everything that isn’t recorded is all shunting”, then VOSA will probably be suspicious.
It’s not just “doing the right thing”, it’s “being seen to be doing the right thing”.
They might also be wise to get the shunter some proper training - at least shunter training on H&S grounds and a C1 driving license so that he can get his digi-card.
The shunter has his shunters card and done the training, he must be nearly due for retirement.
He used to be a class 1 driver in the 1960’s he told me, before HGV licences were around, then got a job in warehousing.
The company offered to put him through his class 1 and class 2 licence in the past, but he supposedly refused, because he is in charge of the warehouse side of things and knows if he had a HGV licence he would end up having to go out do deliveries if they were stuck.
Just thinking as well about the companies with class 2 vehicles getting them loaded and unloaded at night by shunters, i take it these vehicles are driven round the yard as well without digi cards.
If vehicles are driven solely on private land then the driver needs neither an HGV licence nor a digital tacho card. So, basically the shunter is covered for the time he uses a particular vehicle. This DOES NOT apply, if at any time during a shift the vehicle is taken on a road open to the public.
The ‘Event’ of driving without a card is recorded in the mass memory of the Vehicle Unit (VU) it is not recorded on your driver card, how can it be, your card was not inserted at the time the event was recorded. Actually, that is not strictly true in all cases. If a driver card is in slot one (where it should be) and a control card is put in slot two (as would usually happen is VOSA / Police wished to download a card / VU) then the VU enters ‘control mode’ and no-longer ‘recognises’ the driver card. If you now move the vehicle the VU will record the event of ‘driving without a card inserted,’ with both card numbers recorded against the event. With UK cards it’s easy to spot that it is a driver card and whether it’s Police or VOSA so it’s no real problem.
Anybody with a full licence from category B upwards can get a digital driver card, you do not have to have HGV or PSV entitlement to get one.
Although not law, it would be ‘best practise’ for a company to note which vehicles are used by a shunter on yard work. A few minutes making a note in a diary can save hours of answering questions.
The ‘shunters’ putting vehicles on to or taking them off a ferry may be causing themselves a problem. It depends upon the precise circumstances of each case, but dock roads are often seen as ‘roads open to the public’ in which case they will need to use tachos / driver cards, but IMHO that’s their problem and not yours.
The Company card is used to ‘lock’ data in VU’s so only that card may download data from that VU in the future. The first thing a company needs to do when they get a new digital vehicle is ‘lock-in.’ At least every 56 days after that they use the company card to download the data to what is called a ‘downloading tool.’ Data is not downloaded to the company card, think of that as the key to the padlock, it allows downloading to take place. When the company gets rid of the vehicle it downloads and then ‘locks-out,’ stopping a later used of the vehicle getting the information from previous users.