Tacho question - help please?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
21

im out of date with my truck mags. i took 6 weeks off (in the end) so i wasnt buying them either. it just goes to show how valuable they are for this kind of stuff. when you dont buy them, all sorts of things happen :open_mouth:

22

cornish trucker:
I finish with my current employer on Friday and start with the new company Tuesday next week.

What happens regarding my last working Tacho from this week?

The reason I ask, is that, by law, if I get pulled over next week, I must provide my last working tacho disc from the previous week, however my current company want all discs, including my last and will provide me with a photo-copy of it. Surely this is not genuine proof of last day driving?

If, I take my last disc with me, what happens to it? Does my new employer keep it? Or do I return it to old employer?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

John

Which part of “you must carry all your charts for your current week and the last day (worked)of the previous week” don’t you understand?

23

Mike-C:
Which part of “you must carry all your charts for your current week and the last day (worked)of the previous week” don’t you understand?

No point in understanding it, by the time he starts his new job that regulation will be history. :wink: :smiley:

24

so in your opinion all the foreign operators that have basically been able do as they please on uk roads simply because they knew they’d never be checked will now be stopped on a regular basis because they’ll be carrying more tacho’s■■?
don’t spose for one minute any of them foreigners would be deviouse enough to put someone elses name on their tacho’s before they enter the uk.
until someone in power realises that ec regs are unworkable in the uk and are actually a detrement to road safety, every new rule they fetch in means more pressure on the driver to get to somewhere in a certain time because he or she has just spent two hours of their valueable driving time crawling through roadworks or the aftermath of an rta.

25

paul b:
so in your opinion all the foreign operators that have basically been able do as they please on uk roads simply because they knew they’d never be checked will now be stopped on a regular basis because they’ll be carrying more tacho’s■■?

I didn’t say all, but the authorities have already said the changes will make it easier for them to catch foreign drivers who are ignoring the regulations. At the moment, if a driver is stopped heading up from say Dover on a Monday he legally only has to produce two charts - that days plus the last day of the previous week, which if they produce a chart for Sunday, gives no way of telling if they have had a weekly rest.

This coupled with proposed changes to make it easier to fine foreign drivers is at least a step in the right direction.

paul b:
until someone in power realises that ec regs are unworkable in the uk and are actually a detrement to road safety

Thousands of companies and drivers manage to work within them. I don’t see how limiting the amount of driving time and specifying the amount of rest required can be detrimental to road safety, having no limits would be far more detrimental.

paul b:
every new rule they fetch in means more pressure on the driver to get to somewhere in a certain time because he or she has just spent two hours of their valueable driving time crawling through roadworks or the aftermath of an rta

So are you saying we shouldn’t have restrictions on driving time because we have congestion and road accidents? Regardless of whether it is the EU or the UK that lays down the limits, there will always be occasions when driving time is lost because of traffic conditions and that will have a knock on effect, unless we have no restrictions at all.

26

we currently have regs that if followed to the letter means-

  1. it’s better to sleep in a cramped cab and then get up for another days driving rather than drive an extra half hour down the road and home.
  2. it’s better to have to stop in some lorry park after whats already been a long day for a 45min break before you then drive half hour further down the road and home.
    3.theres so little leeway in the rules that drivers will go to any lenghs to stay within the written regs, break posted speed limits, tamper with limiters or just basically drive like nutters , but thats ok because the round piece of paper aint gona get em in bover.
    so yes, i’d say the current regs are detrementle to road safety! it can’t be anything else when thousand of drivers are chasing the clock everyday in an attempt to stay “legal”
    the whole setup is nothing more than a sham.
27

The trouble with leeway is that it gets abused. If you were allowed 30 minutes leeway it would not change a thing. It would just be counted as normal hours. What if, even after using the 30 minute leeway you end up 30 minutes from home? Another 30 minute leeway?

Regarding your points.

  1. That doesn’t happen every day and if it does then the planning needs to be looked at. On a personal note it isn’t an issue for me anyway as I sleep better, and have more sleep, in the cab than I do at home, and I know several other drivers who say the same thing.

  2. Yes, that can be a pain but again it doesn’t happen every day. Also education in the rules can go a long way to helping this. So many drivers have such little knowledge of the rules that they don’t know how to get the best out of them. I know of, and have read post on various forums from drivers who have taken an unnecessary break when heading home because they don’t know the rules on splitting a break for instance.

  3. Again it seems you are suggesting a free for all with no restrictions. Whatever the restrictions are, someone will always ignore them and try various dodges to beat them. No restrictions would be far more dangerous and any leeway would be abused and also be a danger. Look at the speeds of cars on motorways, most do around 80 instead of 70 and are unlikely to be prosecuted for doing that. That could be called leeway, but if the limit was raised to 80 do you think cars would still do 80 or would it be pushed up to 90?

28

i hear what your saying and no regs at all would be madness but the fta fought tooth an nail on all the proposed changes to no avail, why? thats simple, you have a committee made up of representatives from all ec countries to vote on rule changes but in reality only the uk will treat those changes as “law”, and yet we’re the one state who’s road network dictates that in truth those regs are unworkable.
you say that thousands of companies and their drivers manage to stay within the rules, i’m not so sure, i’d go as far as to say that you couldn’t go in any firm in the uk and not find at least a few dodgy tacho’s and the mags are full of outfits every week that have had more than the odd few and been caught, some of that is down to sheer greed of the owners but a lot of it is purely drivers trying to do the job they’re paid for, which puts us in a situation where firms now use tacho analysts purely so they can show the ministry that they are taking the regs seriously, of coarse what they’re actually doing is passing the buck onto the individual driver should any misdemeanors come to light.
as things stand if your doing uk only and have a load to take down the road which is over 200 mile, even if it’s virtually all motorway and your prepared to set of in the middle of the night, it’s absolutely pot luck whether you can do that run and get back within the current regs, and stay legal, to me, that’s crazy!
if a driver can’t do 400 odd mile a day in a safe manor regardless of how long it takes, he shouldn’t be behind the wheel.

29

Thanks for all the replies.

Neil, spoke with VOSA and confirmed what you stated, thanks mate, that’s a large fresh ground Columbian caffeine fix I owe you :smiley:

Mike-C wrote:

Which part of “you must carry all your charts for your current week and the last day (worked)of the previous week” don’t you understand?

I understand the regulations, but with previous problems with a [zb] TM, I was confirming my understandings - SIMPLE REALLY!

Regards

John

30

paul b:
i hear what your saying and no regs at all would be madness but the fta fought tooth an nail on all the proposed changes to no avail, why?

Almost all the FTA objections were from a company point of view and not the drivers, most of their objections were against those changes that would have, or will mean more rest for the driver. Some they won, the objection to increasing daily rest to 12 hours for instance. And some they lost, they objected to the new rule regarding reducing weekly rest on consecutive weekends.

paul b:
thats simple, you have a committee made up of representatives from all ec countries to vote on rule changes but in reality only the uk will treat those changes as “law”, and yet we’re the one state who’s road network dictates that in truth those regs are unworkable.

Other countries will enforce it and our road network is not alone in suffering from congestion and accidents, parts of Germany and Holland for instance are just one big traffic jam on a daily basis.

paul b:
you say that thousands of companies and their drivers manage to stay within the rules, i’m not so sure, i’d go as far as to say that you couldn’t go in any firm in the uk and not find at least a few dodgy tacho’s and the mags are full of outfits every week that have had more than the odd few and been caught,

True, but the magazines only report on companies that have been caught. You don’t see lists of companies that have been checked and no problems found so those reports will not be a true reflection of the state of play. They do, now and again, report on a large roadside check and list the number of vehicles stopped and how many were found to have tacho offences etc and those with no tacho problems is always the bigger number.

31

cornish trucker:
Thanks for all the replies.

Neil, spoke with VOSA and confirmed what you stated, thanks mate, that’s a large fresh ground Columbian caffeine fix I owe you :smiley:

Mike-C wrote:

Which part of “you must carry all your charts for your current week and the last day (worked)of the previous week” don’t you understand?

I understand the regulations, but with previous problems with a [zb] TM, I was confirming my understandings - SIMPLE REALLY!

Regards

John

Never take any notice of a TM John, they know less than us!!