tofer:
Ditto what we’ve been told by our driver trainers…
Seems to be an awful lot of driver trainers who could benefit from a spot of training. Might improve things all round if they did that instead of repeating the same old nonsense without checking. They did, and some are still doing, the same thing with the ‘must have 30 minutes break at 6 hours’ WTD thing. How the hell do they get the job when they seem so clueless?
I wish they would invent a digi tacho the would remind you when your 6 hours “total work” is approaching, catches me out some times when i’m stop starting and have to find some were quick to pull over to have another 15 mins break if i’ve already had the 15 min tacho break
pecjam23:
…have to find some were quick to pull over to have another 15 mins break if i’ve already had the 15 min tacho break
If you’ve already had a 15-minute tacho break sometime between starting work and reaching the 6 hours work point then you won’t need to pull over at the 6 hours for a 15 minute WTD break. The tacho break also counts toward the WTD.
pecjam23:
…have to find some were quick to pull over to have another 15 mins break if i’ve already had the 15 min tacho break
If you’ve already had a 15-minute tacho break sometime between starting work and reaching the 6 hours work point then you won’t need to pull over at the 6 hours for a 15 minute WTD break. The tacho break also counts toward the WTD.
sorry i meant 8 hours other work. i’m doing well this morning.
pecjam23:
…have to find some were quick to pull over to have another 15 mins break if i’ve already had the 15 min tacho break
If you’ve already had a 15-minute tacho break sometime between starting work and reaching the 6 hours work point then you won’t need to pull over at the 6 hours for a 15 minute WTD break. The tacho break also counts toward the WTD.
sorry i meant 8 hours other work. i’m doing well this morning.
Now you are even more confused. Why would you need a break at 8 hours work, assuming you haven’t reached 4.5 hours driving by this point?
if we were told correct in our drivers meeting you have to have 30 mins break if you worked 8 hours some days i havent yet done 4.5 hours of driving but have been working 8 hours. But have already had a 15 min tacho break but then need to have another 15 min break to statisfy the WTD then later on have a whole 30 mins for tacho break when i reach 4.5 hours driving if i decide i want to do that, yes i could just have 30 mins break instead of the 2nd 15 min break but some days i dont feel like doing that.
please tell me i have’nt been doing this all wrong and have needlesly been taking breaks
You must take a break at or before completeing 6 hours work.
If your working up to 9 hours you must have a break or breaks totaling at least 30 minutes.
If your working jmore than 9 hours you must have a break or breaks totaling at least 45 minutes.
Breaks must be of at least 15 minutes duration.
WTD breaks can be used to satisfy Tacho regs.
pecjam23:
STOP THE PRESS - i have just found the powerpoint guide the boss gave us, it’s 9 hours , where the hell did i get 8 hours from
sorry coffeholic if you spat your coffee out over the keyboard when you read my first post…
They don’t half talk some ■■■■■■■■ in your driver’s meeting. You only need to take that second break between 6 and 9 hours if you will not exceed 9 hours work for the shift. If you are going to exceed 9 hours you can take the second part either before accumulating another 6 hours work from the first break or before the end of your shift, whichever comes first. It’s quite possible you have been taking that second break when you didn’t actually need to and the 30 minutes you take later for the tacho rules would also mean you have taken the required 45 minutes for more than 9 hours work for the WTD. It’s fine if they pay you for breaks but some days you may want to finish a bit earlier and the needless break would not help you accomplish that.
Remember it is working time that triggers the WTD breaks not necessarily the time from the start of the shift if you have had POA
I love WTD breaks, they are great if I need to get some extra hours in, if it’s a payback shift and I’m in a rush to get done they strangely seem to vanish into the tacho breaks.
Over here in Germany ,we was Informened that
the DIGI-TACHO keeps, the TEN worst over speed-
-ing offences ,up to date, at all times.SO that
the nice enforcement officer, and your boss can
see when and by how much you like speeding,
The VU records, the most serious event for each of the 10 last days of occurrence (i.e. the one with the highest average speed), the five most serious events over the last 365 days and the first event having occurred after the last calibration. And per each of these events it records;
date and time of beginning of event,
— date and time of end of event,
— maximum speed measured during the
event,
— arithmetic average speed measured during
the event,
— card’s type, number and issuing Member
State of the driver (if applicable),
— number of similar events that day.
My personal view is when driving a non digitacho equipped coach on the motorway I will quite happily run up to the motorway limit where conditions allow. However In a digitacho equipped vehicle I will always make sure I keep it to 100 kph so as to avoid getting an overspeed warning even if the stupid tacho itself is over-reading compared with my gps speeds (one shows 100 kph when the true speed is 95 kph) …
OK I’ll admit that I’m confused as to why so many folk in the UK get vexed about overspeed on digital tachos. If the overspeed report says you were doing 94 km/h for 2 minutes why should I care? Now, 94 km/h for 10 minutes is a different matter as that tends to indicate that the speed limiter is / was defective, don’t think there are many ‘10 minute’ hills in the UK.
tofer:
Ditto what we’ve been told by our driver trainers…
Seems to be an awful lot of driver trainers who could benefit from a spot of training. Might improve things all round if they did that instead of repeating the same old nonsense without checking. They did, and some are still doing, the same thing with the ‘must have 30 minutes break at 6 hours’ WTD thing. How the hell do they get the job when they seem so clueless?
This is only the start of it with driver trainers
Wait till they are “TRYING” to teach you how to do the rest of your job for the Driver CPC after all isn’t it normal that those that can do the job do the job and those that cant teach it
daveb0789:
My personal view is when driving a non digitacho equipped coach on the motorway I will quite happily run up to the motorway limit where conditions allow. However In a digitacho equipped vehicle I will always make sure I keep it to 100 kph so as to avoid getting an overspeed warning even if the stupid tacho itself is over-reading compared with my gps speeds (one shows 100 kph when the true speed is 95 kph) …
If the tacho is calibrated correctly it should read the same as the gps.
So which is the most accurate,sat nav speed or digi speed.for example on mine they both read the same at 30mph,40mph but when speedo says 50mph sat nav reads 48mph and 52mph sat nav reads 50mph.
Don’t know about any higher speeds as we are limited to 52(on speedo) and of course never get overspeeds!!!
I’m not a truck driver but an electronics production engineer and maybe can give one reason why the digital tachos’ behave the way that they do. It’s down to economics and/or poor basic design. As, as far as I can see, these tachos are made and designed in Europe then they will have been designed to probably be tamper proof. In order for them to be adjustable to the UK speed restrictions then there would have to be some password protected or secure mechanism that would allow any tacho to be set to the UK speed.
But that would then open up the possibility of applying the same speed settings to tachos being used on the continent. Which in turn would make law enforcement of alleged excess speed more difficult since there would be no easy way for anyone to know if the tacho had been set to the UK limits.
The alternative could be to have two different tacho types - one for the UK market and one for the home market - but if the basic design did not easily allow for this then that would explain why there is only the one variant.
Don’t know if that helps or whether I’m talking out of my rear orifice.
Great site, BTW, as it was the only place where I could find out the status of that poor Greek driver and was delighted to find that he’d been released …but still doesn’t explain why he was arrested in the first place as it was as clear a case of self-defence as I’ve ever seen. So much for Jack ‘You should be able to defend yourself without fear of prosecution’ Straws’ mouthings.
Why would you need a break at 8 hours work, assuming you haven’t reached 4.5 hours driving by this point?
You only need to take that second break between 6 and 9 hours if you will not exceed 9 hours work for the shift. If you are going to exceed 9 hours you can take the second part either before accumulating another 6 hours work from the first break or before the end of your shift, whichever comes first. It’s quite possible you have been taking that second break when you didn’t actually need to and the 30 minutes you take later for the tacho rules would also mean you have taken the required 45 minutes for more than 9 hours work for the WTD. It’s fine if they pay you for breaks but some days you may want to finish a bit earlier and the needless break would not help you accomplish that.