News

Truck operators may soon face fines of up to £5,000 if they fail to download and store digital tachograph information under a new offence of not downloading data.

Operators may also have to provide digital tachograph data within 24 hours of a serious incident if requested by an enforcement officer.

According to a consultation document published this week by the Department for Transport: "Operators must take all reasonable steps to  protect downloaded data from loss."

The paper suggests three approaches to how often operators will have to download information from driver cards and vehicle units. The first would make each transport operator responsible for deciding how frequently data should be downloaded. The second is for the government to set a statutory maximum time between downloads, likely to be 14 days for driver cards and 56 weeks for vehicle units.

The third - and the DfT's preferred scheme - is a variation on the second option which would "set a relatively lax maximum time between downloads alongside a statutory requirement for operators to ensure that data is not overwritten".

Under this scheme the time between downloads could be every 28 days, but with a responsibility on operators and drivers to ensure data isn't overwritten or lost.

• The cost to operators of running tachographs could fall with new digital equipment, estimates the DfT. It suggests a fleet of 10 vehicles  would save £3,607 over three years, excluding training and the cost of a computer.
• Drivers using vehicles with digital tachographs must currently be able to produce their driver's card, any manual records and printouts made during the current week and the previous 15 days, and any analogue tachograph records from the same period. From January 21 2008 the time period will be extended to include the current day and the previous 28 days, ie 29 days' worth of records overall.