Digital tachographs could be losing truckers almost an hour of driving time per day, thanks to the way that the tachos work, Motor Transport can reveal.
MT understands that if a driver starts the ignition twice in a three-minute period the whole three minutes counts as driving time, because of the 120-second buffer period before a digitach automatically switches to other work if it is not moving.
The RHA has already warned that there is a quirk with the way that the
new technology records driving time rounding up to the nearest minute, but it appears that the problem is worse than previously thought.
Paul Willis, driver training manager at Devon-based Gregory Distribution, told delegates at Motor Transport’s fleet management conference this Wednesday that his company is finding severe effects on its multi-drop operations; drivers on pallet distribution work are seeing a loss of driving time of up to 45 minutes per day.
Willis has since told MT that Gregory is also finding a loss of up to 20 minutes driving time on trunking routes.
VOSA is aware of the problem. Barry Ricks, workstream leader for VOSA’s digital tachograph project, had earlier confirmed what Willis was saying.
Willis says that Ricks is visiting Gregory Distribution next week to see the evidence from the company’s telematics system.
Both Ricks and Willis stressed that the discrepancies are down to the legal specifications of the
digitach’s design, and that the European Commission has been informed.
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