I recently had the pleasure of spending half an hour with those LOVELY folk of the Merseyside Docks Police. They were even kind enough to give me a £200 fine for ‘missuse of equipment’. This was because on 3 seperate occasions I’d forgotten to select REST and so my card showed I was carrying out OTHER WORK for a periods from 9 & 11 hours. CLEARLY this was a mistake. I even explained to the nice officers that I’d recently been diagnosed with ADHD and forgetting things was part of my condition. Unfortunately the print outs I’d done were sent into my transport office and have since been lost. But my boss has said he’d be willing to verify this should I decide to appeal. Which I have decided to do. Have a court hearing in May. Any advice welcome
3 times in the last 28 days?
Are these manual entry errors or leaving it in the wrong mode with your card in?
Do you realise that you are responsible for keeping the printouts for the first 28 days before handing into the office? You really should keep them as safe as you do your license, dcpc and tacho cards.
I saw a yt video recently where a driver got out of a fine just because he kept such good records. He had a massive diary (A4 sized book) and had stapled in every day that he had to do a printout. So it’s not about if you do something wrong, but if you have the records to support it.
I wish I could give advice for the fine you’ve already got, but I’ve got nothing.
I wasn’t aware that docks police had the ability to hand out fines for tachograph misuse in their remit.
stu675:
Do you realise that you are responsible for keeping the printouts for the first 28 days before handing into the office? .
Just do two printouts for the day in question, hand one in and keep hold of the other.
markrbonello:
I even explained to the nice officers that I’d recently been diagnosed with ADHD and forgetting things was part of my condition.
Do you have a medical statement to factually support memory impairment? If not, I wouldn’t bring it up again in front of the magistrate.
markrbonello:
Unfortunately the print outs I’d done were sent into my transport office and have since been lost. But my boss has said he’d be willing to verify this should I decide to appeal. Which I have decided to do. Have a court hearing in May. Any advice welcome
You can/could have done printouts for those days from the tacho head no problem as long as your card is inserted. It’s a bit of a myth that they only hold 28 days worth of data. I’d suggest you do that asap, as your transport office stating they had “lost” your printouts but can “verify” they existed isn’t likely to do much for you, nor for them, apart from raising the likelihood of DVSA dropping in for a pot of tea while they look through the companies record keeping systems, which are obviously sub-standard if they can’t manage to staple a few printouts to something in your driver file.
I wasn’t aware that docks police had the ability to hand out fines for tachograph misuse in their remit.
Neither was I, but apparently they fall under DVSA.