Does anybody know if the powers that be ever intend to upgrade the software in the digital tacho. I don’t want to run bent, I just want the ■■■■ thing, which counts in seconds, to register in seconds and not in whole minutes, and to count poa in it’s own register, additional to break, so that it does not add to break time and zero the tacho before you have had a 45. It wouldn’t be a big change, and it shouldn’t be expensive, but in my paranoid mind, do I see other motives?
bigdennis:
Does anybody know if the powers that be ever intend to upgrade the software in the digital tacho. I don’t want to run bent, I just want the ■■■■ thing, which counts in seconds, to register in seconds and not in whole minutes, and to count poa in it’s own register, additional to break, so that it does not add to break time and zero the tacho before you have had a 45. It wouldn’t be a big change, and it shouldn’t be expensive, but in my paranoid mind, do I see other motives?
How did you go on with analouge? Did you just go off your watch or something? The reason i ask is that going back to analouge has just made me realise how straightforeward the digital is, rather than having to note every minute driving on a piece of paper or DHG its all there at the press of a button.
Short answers to the questions;
the way driving activity is recorded will change for Digi Tachos built on / after 01/10/2011. What they are changing is how a minute with ‘split activity’ will be assigned to a single activity. At present if the vehicle moves for more than 5 seconds the whole minute will be recorded as driving. Also if you have a minute where the vehicle does not move, but the minutes either side are ‘driving’ then the middle minute will be recorded as driving.
In October 2011 this will change so that activity assigned to a minute will be the longest continuous activity in that minute. So, if the vehicle moves for 20 seconds and is stationary for 30 seconds then moves for 10 seconds the minute will be recorded as ‘work,’ assuming that no mode changes are made by the driver. This would have been recorded as ‘driving’ by the current Digi Tacho. The bit about the middle stationary minute remains in the legislation.
The bit about periods of 15 minutes or more of break, availability or unknown summing to 45 minutes and then zeroing accumulated driving time remains in the legislation.
The software in the current Digi Tachos cannot be updated to the new spec after October next year, or so say two people I have spoken to that should know. This is due to the security protocols written into the firmware. So is you want to update the tacho to the new spec you’ll have to buy a new VU and have it fitted and calibrated.
Analogue tachos whilst making a continuous record are only read to an accuracy of +/- one minute and certainly not to the second. The divisions on the time scale are ‘5 minutes’ and a good chart reader (not the cheap things you can buy at some truckstops) will have a scale division representing two minutes so you can just about get to 1 minute. Hence they are no more accurate than Digi Tachos.
Gb, I am curious about the legal aspects of this change in the way digital tachos record data. How can it be legal to record, on what I believe is legal documentation, for want of a better phrase, something one way and then in potentially a much different way (if you see what I mean)? Surely it nullifies the “evidence” of such tachos in general if one system allows the driver to “get away” with more driving time by only moving for less than 30 seconds in a minute in traffic say, whereas another is penalised by having 2 minutes added to his/her driving when they moved for only 6 seconds! I’m all for the new system as it sounds fairer but it also sounds like it will introduce a sort of 2 tier system to recording driving time and seems to me to be unfair to people using the old system; I wonder how e.g. excess driving hours infringements could be affected. I suppose it would be to drivers’ advantage to get the new tachos fitted.
Thanks for the answers to some of my queries. I also realise that when using the digital tacho one can see how long one has driven since the last 45min break, but no up to the minute display, whilst on the move, of driving hours for the day. With my old merc central display this showed up, and when using an analogue, like so many, I also had the kitchen timer stuck in plain view, showing time driven that day. This display of time driven would be an advantage so you could see how close to the end of day allowance you are. What I usually do is at the last stop prior to end of shift is scroll through the tacho info and find out how much driving time remains for the day, jot it down and work to that. I don’t trust the timer showing 15minutes to break, which of course won’t go off if you have less than 4. 30 left for the last driving stint.
At least some update is better than none, and those who have to inch forwards in dock queues and the like could get up to an hour back in a day.
Snudger:
Gb, I am curious about the legal aspects of this change in the way digital tachos record data. How can it be legal to record, on what I believe is legal documentation, for want of a better phrase, something one way and then in potentially a much different way (if you see what I mean)? Surely it nullifies the “evidence” of such tachos in general if one system allows the driver to “get away” with more driving time by only moving for less than 30 seconds in a minute in traffic say, whereas another is penalised by having 2 minutes added to his/her driving when they moved for only 6 seconds! I’m all for the new system as it sounds fairer but it also sounds like it will introduce a sort of 2 tier system to recording driving time and seems to me to be unfair to people using the old system; I wonder how e.g. excess driving hours infringements could be affected. I suppose it would be to drivers’ advantage to get the new tachos fitted.
I know it sounds mad, but ‘driving time’ is not neccesarily the time you have driven. Driving time is legally defined as what the machine has recorded as driving time.