Driving and other work

NEW AND WANNABE DRIVERS (INTERACTIVE)
1

Morning.

When your driving and you stop to do ‘other work’ do you manually change your tacho to other work?

I heard that it automatically changes to ‘other work’ when the engine is turned off, how long does this take to change?

What’s the best way? Leave the tacho to change itself or change it manually?

Sorry if a silly question [emoji12]

2

Once the wheels stop turning, the unit will auto-switch to “other work” unless it’s set to default to Break. Our Scania’s have this annoying habit.

3

So when your stuck in traffic it will switch to other work?

4

matt.robb2:
So when your stuck in traffic it will switch to other work?

Indeed! You’ll have a mile long printout at the end too!

5

Radar19:
Once the wheels stop turning, the unit will auto-switch to “other work” unless it’s set to default to Break. Our Scania’s have this annoying habit.

Not just Scania, I normally drive a Mercedes Actros which defaults to ‘other work’, but they sent me out in an older DAF a few weeks ago and that too defaults to ‘break’.

If you’re on a fixed salary, or paid hourly by shift start/finish then it probably doesn’t matter (and indeed, it will keep your working averages down so reduces the risk of you exceeding your maximum hour limits). However, if you’re paid for the actual amount of driving and other work you do then you’ll be wanting to check the behaviour of the tachograph whenever you drive an unfamiliar truck.

6

matt.robb2:
Morning.

  1. When your driving and you stop to do ‘other work’ do you manually change your tacho to other work?

  2. I heard that it automatically changes to ‘other work’ when the engine is turned off, how long does this take to change?

  3. What’s the best way? Leave the tacho to change itself or change it manually?

  4. Sorry if a silly question [emoji12]

  1. No.

  2. Tachographs are designed to automatically change to driving when the vehicle starts moving and automatically change back to other work when the vehicle stops moving, it’s law that they operate this way.

  3. Depending on the type of tachograph the activity recorded will change within a minute.

  4. There’s little if anything to be gained by manually changing back to other work when the vehicle stops moving and you can’t change to driving because there’s no function to change to driving.

  5. They’re not silly questions :wink:

All digital tachographs should automatically change to other work when the vehicle stops moving.

The activity that’s automatically selected when the ignition is switched off can be changed at a tachograph centre, I believe the default setting for this can be changed in the settings on some newer tachographs.