We all know, presumably, you can only increase to 15 hours twice in any one working week, etc, etc, blah,blah, blah.
So… … simple question:
When, either legally or according to VOSA, does a shift become a 15 hour shift?
Anyone?
i’d say once you’ve worked 13hrs 1min. I could be wrong I often am. 
Actually it’s 3 times in your week.
Since the law is written to only talk of rest periods and not shift lengths it turns into a reduced rest period the minute you can no longer get 11 hours rest within the 24 hour period from when you finished the previous daily rest period.
In simple terms, to be counted as a15 hour shift anything over 13 hours, even just by 1 minute.
Win-Stone:
We all know, presumably, you can only increase to 15 hours twice in any one working week, etc, etc, blah,blah, blah.So… … simple question:
When, either legally or according to VOSA, does a shift become a 15 hour shift?
Anyone?
In fact its 3 times and not 2.And anything over 13.Be it by a min.Then becomes a reduced daily rest.
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When you finish 13 hours 1 minute or later after starting having not had a rest period of at least 3 hours, this would leave a reduced rest in a 24 hour period of less than 11 hours off.
If you’ve had 3 uninterrupted hours break (rest) you can then work upto 15 hours from your start time (single manned) for upto 6 days as it is classed as a split rests rather than reduced rests.
Upto 2 of those 6 days could have not had a 3 hour rest period these would be classed as reduced rests.
Forget shift length & think of rest length. If you have less than 11 hours rest its a reduced rest with the caveat about split rest with minimum of 3 hours in one block & 9 hours in one block works better for my easily puzzled mind.
13 hours 1 minute means you’ve used a 15 hour.
However, if you start work at 07:00 and book off at 17:00 having done a 10 hour shift. If you were start at 03:00 the next morning you’ve had less than 11hours rest, so even though you only worked 10 hours…you’ve still used one of your 3 15s.
So it’s better to think of it that you can reduce your rest to less than 11 hours down to a minimum of 9 hours 3 times a week, rather than that you can work up to 15 hours 3 times.
Wiretwister:
Forget shift length & think of rest length. If you have less than 11 hours rest its a reduced rest with the caveat about split rest with minimum of 3 hours in one block & 9 hours in one block works better for my easily puzzled mind.
Doing that confuses it though, far too many drivers think they can work 15 and have 11 off and think it’s a standard daily rest. It all depends when the card went in and how many hours of uninterrupted rest have happened 24 hours after that point or when the next shift starts, whichever is earlier.
You don’t necessearily need to work more than 13 hours for you to have reduced a daily rest.
You can work 5 x 11 hour shifts in a week, and if you’ve had less than 11 hours rest between each shift 3 times that week, you cannot reduce your daily rest again that week.
I suppose you could say you’ve “got no 15s left”, but technically that means you cannot have less than 11 hours daily rest in the 24 hour period after the end of the previous daily rest period.