It looks like I will be getting a new motor at the end of the month (Scania) obviously it will have a digi tach fitted, now having never used one what are the pros and cons with them? I have heard they take minutes off your driving time when crawling a few yards in traffic. Any thing else to look out for?
Cheers
If your crawling in traffic they can eat into your driving time, on the other hand if your sat in traffic and dont move for two minutes it books it down as other work, well the one in my m.a.n does anyhow. Depending on how it has been set up it will start to flash an overspeed warning anywhere between 57 and 60mph. Just dont keep the overspeed up to long, the boys in the people carriers ani`t keen, to clear it off the tacho screen just press ok.
Traffic is a definite problem because they count in minutes rather than seconds which analogue does. So for instance you are driving for 10 seconds but those 10 seconds are in between 2 calender minutes it will count as 2 minutes driving but you have only done 10 seconds. If you’re on POA for more than 45 minutes it will also reset your driving time. It seems to think POA is break which it isn’t, so watch out for this i know a few people who have been caught out by this.
I actually prefer them to be honest, i find it is less poofing about with charts. You get accurate read outs of your driving time. I have got zero infringements in the last 7 months where as with analogue it was always stupid things like centre field mistakes or explaining those 2 minutes before your EOD line and the tacho going into the head.
I think they are good but if you run driving time to the max then you may have some headaches. Normal day i lose probably 10-20 minutes driving time hooking up, yards etc. In really heavy traffic you can lose 40 - 60 minutes by crawling.
They also have the advantage of if your gaffer is putting you under pressure to get that delivery done, you can prove to him that your 9/10 hours driving time is/was almost finished by a print out.
Ken.
Remember to make sure that your driving time on the tacho actually correspondes with the time on the dash, my didn`t on my m.a.n so last week when my dash was showing 9hr27 my printout showed 10hr 01. Got it sorted at the dealers but just watch it!
dowahdiddyman:
Remember to make sure that your driving time on the tacho actually correspondes with the time on the dash, my didn`t on my m.a.n so last week when my dash was showing 9hr27 my printout showed 10hr 01. Got it sorted at the dealers but just watch it!
I have noticed this when driving DAF’s. I was told that the dash is the accurate one because it records actual time driven whereas the tacho rounds it up. If I don’t have to hook up a trailer at the start of the day they are virtually the same, if I do a few trailer changes then the tacho goes way ahead of the dash.
waddy640:
dowahdiddyman:
Remember to make sure that your driving time on the tacho actually correspondes with the time on the dash, my didn`t on my m.a.n so last week when my dash was showing 9hr27 my printout showed 10hr 01. Got it sorted at the dealers but just watch it!I have noticed this when driving DAF’s. I was told that the dash is the accurate one because it records actual time driven whereas the tacho rounds it up.
But the one on the dash is not the one to go by, VOSA or the analysis company won’t go by that one.
Coffeeholic:
waddy640:
dowahdiddyman:
Remember to make sure that your driving time on the tacho actually correspondes with the time on the dash, my didn`t on my m.a.n so last week when my dash was showing 9hr27 my printout showed 10hr 01. Got it sorted at the dealers but just watch it!I have noticed this when driving DAF’s. I was told that the dash is the accurate one because it records actual time driven whereas the tacho rounds it up.
But the one on the dash is not the one to go by, VOSA or the analysis company won’t go by that one.
Funny I didn’t know that, ah well you learn something new every day
waddy640:
Coffeeholic:
waddy640:
dowahdiddyman:
Remember to make sure that your driving time on the tacho actually correspondes with the time on the dash, my didn`t on my m.a.n so last week when my dash was showing 9hr27 my printout showed 10hr 01. Got it sorted at the dealers but just watch it!I have noticed this when driving DAF’s. I was told that the dash is the accurate one because it records actual time driven whereas the tacho rounds it up.
But the one on the dash is not the one to go by, VOSA or the analysis company won’t go by that one.
Funny I didn’t know that, ah well you learn something new every day
I’m sure you did know and I wasn’t having a dig at you but many drivers do go by the dash rather than the digi and even go to the length of getting the workshop to fix the problem when it doesn’t actually matter.
I took it in the spirit it was meant, the point I was making was that a a fair bit of driving time is wasted due to the way the tacho works. The dash reading highlights how much time you actually lose.
waddy640:
I took it in the spirit it was meant, the point I was making was that a a fair bit of driving time is wasted due to the way the tacho works. The dash reading highlights how much time you actually lose.
I’m not convinced we lose as much as we think sometimes. I think we got away with a lot of underestimating on a analogue. I reckon I lose maybe 5 or 6 minutes a day on average, certainly not more than 10 very often, and there are ways of minimising the loss. and traffic jams more often that not give back more than I lose with it recording stops of more than a minute as other work.
There is also a lot of crap spouted by drivers on this subject. I had a guy recently telling me it took him 3 hours to get somewhere instead of his normal 90 minutes because of a traffic jam due to an accident. He then reckoned the digi tacho had recorded 4 hours 25 minutes of driving in that 3 hour period which is just nonsense. The machine counts whole minutes as driving even when you have only driven part of that minute, it doesn’t add minutes to the day, a day is still 1440 minutes and a digi cannot change that. The most driving it will show in a 3 hour traffic jam delayed journey is 3 hours and will most likely have recorded less than that if the jam is a particularly heavy one.
I got held up last week due to an accident, stopped for 15 mins and then the road was reopened. !5 mins other work was recorded.
waddy640:
I got held up last week due to an accident, stopped for 15 mins and then the road was reopened. !5 mins other work was recorded.
I’d have had that on break for those 15 minutes, might have come in handy later in the day. Engine off, tacho on break, seat reclined and relax. 
You can’t always do that…You may get say…9 mins and the traffic moves on. What then?
bigvern1:
You can’t always do that…You may get say…9 mins and the traffic moves on. What then?
You had a 9 minute break. No good as part of a break for the tacho regs but won’t count as working time for the WTD so it is still of some use.
They are better than analogue in almost every way, now that I have got used to them. I haven’t had to use my stopwatch/kitchen timer thing much at all since driving a digi, as all the info is right on hand for you.
As people have mentioned POA resets your driving time counter. Also note that it takes no notice of the fact if you are going to spilt your 45 minute driving break, the regs state it must be a 15 first followed by a 30. But a reverse of this will also reset the drive timer, I would imagine 3 x 15 minute breaks would reset it as well. I’m not sure what contingency the designers of the software have made for rules changes along the way, there must be some facility to update the vehicle units, but I don’t know what that is.
I never use POA anymore because I don’t see the point. In my experience, setting it to break whenever legally possible can quite often work out helpful later in the day, when you might be pushed to get somewhere. If you had it set to POA earlier in the day instead, you will have to stop for that break that you could have got out of the way earlier. I’m not one who likes to be sat around during the day just because he can. I want to get on and get finished. Plenty of time for sleep then.
Take a bit of time to play with the menu to work out the different features. All the features you could want are in there.
My gripes are:
Of the 4 times that are displayed on the default display (i.e. the only one you can access while driving), the bottom left (whatever that is displaying on a Siemens, I forget) is useless, and should have displayed something that is more useful to the driver in his everyday work.
The way it rounds time up does annoy me, but only from a technical/engineering perspective. A second is not exactly a small unit of time, so why couldn’t it just count in seconds and then maybe round up/down to the minute at the end of a shift.
I also find the overspeed “warning” annoying, and completely uneccessary. I will still travel at 60mph on the motorway where possible as that is the speed limit. I don’t wish to be flashed at every 60 seconds and have to reset something on a machine. You could argue it’s unsafe to have to look away from the road above your head to press the reset, though that might be considered a pretty thin argument.
Some engineer who was clearly trying to be too clever at the time, designed that feature. Probably never been behind the wheel of a truck for a days work.
I have the same irritated opinion of operators who set their speed limiters at 52 or 50 when they are entitled to set them at 56 (90kmh).
Losing a bit of driving time did used to wind me up, but now i’m mostly tired and just grateful that my day might be over that bit sooner. 
As a driver, you have so little input on how your scheduled deliveries will pan out for the day, so I try not to let anything worry me anymore. Let the TM pull his hair out over that, they certainly dont pay me enough to.
The cards do malfunction, two drivers at our place are currently making printouts every day as there cards are away with the DVLA. Nothing really changes, but I think printouts are messy to carry and untidy to read.
WildGoose:
They are better than analogue in almost every way, now that I have got used to them. I haven’t had to use my stopwatch/kitchen timer thing much at all since driving a digi, as all the info is right on hand for you.As people have mentioned POA resets your driving time counter. Also note that it takes no notice of the fact if you are going to spilt your 45 minute driving break, the regs state it must be a 15 first followed by a 30. But a reverse of this will also reset the drive timer, I would imagine 3 x 15 minute breaks would reset it as well.
It would, as would any 2 break combination that adds up to at least 45 minutes and each break is at least 15 minutes such as 20 and 25 minutes or 28 minutes and 17 minutes. It operates to the pre April 2007 EU rules and the current AETR rules because the specification for the units was laid down long before the 2007 changes to the regs.
WildGoose:
I never use POA anymore because I don’t see the point.
Me too, in fact I’ve never used POA and just use break, if a period qualifies as POA it certainly qualifies as break because teh requirements are less for break than POA.
WildGoose:
Of the 4 times that are displayed on the default display (i.e. the only one you can access while driving), the bottom left (whatever that is displaying on a Siemens, I forget) is useless, and should have displayed something that is more useful to the driver in his everyday work.
It displays the time for the current mode for the card in driver 2 slot if I remember correctly. I agree it’s pretty useless for a one driver operation but not sure what else it could display which would be useful while driving. Total amount of driving and other work since last break might be useful for the WTD 6 hour thing but the tacho is for the Driver’s Hours Rules and not the WTD so I don’t think that is likely.
I had scania r series for cpl years there with digi tach(stoneridge)… like some the other posters have said they’re better than pussin bout fillin in paper charts, but they will eat into your daily driving time the way they tot up the minutes, especially in stop/start traffic not when your crawling along as some have said in here, as long as the wheels are turning then a minutes driving is a minute(if you get my meaning)… Did note on occasions that when running to say 4h 29m it would stick another cpl mins on after had stopped! Or believe this or not, after takin a print out driving time differs on printout to what was currently displayed on the tacho display!