Can you help me… we were having a discussion… if you are caught up in a major accident i.e. air ambulance got to land, and road has to be re-tarmaced and the police tell you it will be hours before you can move, so are allowed to get out of your cab and walk around on the motorway - can you book that as a daily rest ? so you can start a new 24 hour period when the motorway re-opens ? or would you just be stuffed and have to book it as POA and then pull off at the 1st opportunity when you get moving as you would be out of duty time?
It’s POA as you are available to move as soon as you can. Most truckers will put the tacho on break though but you wouldn’t be there for 9 hours unless its snow like that on the m11 a few years ago or rain like there was on the m5 a while back. If you go over your spread over hours in the queue then it’s off and park up as soon as you can, write on the print out why you went over and also put the road you got stuck on and where it was as this covers you if anybody wants to check up
The interesting bit is when you’ve been told you’re there for “the night” and ‘it’ll be into tomorrow’.
Unless vosa/plod are checking all truckers are on POA instead of break, then I can’t see what anyone has got to lose by just sticking it on break, and if you can get a 9 hour booked, then great. If the traffic starts moving after less hours than that, then “oh well, just pull up somewhere” as if you’d booked it all as POA anyway.
Heads you might win, tails you won’t lose any more than throwing your hand away to start with. 
In that snow mentioned a few years back, I ran out of hours on the northbound M1 Toddington exit slip. I couldn’t get into the MSA further than that, because it was chocka with parked up artics all out of time. Several vosa cars drove by, and didn’t give us all a second look parked up back down the slip road onto the hard shoulder of the M1 approaching it…
Give the vosa folk chance to be human! 
Jenson Button:
Can you help me… we were having a discussion… if you are caught up in a major accident i.e. air ambulance got to land, and road has to be re-tarmaced and the police tell you it will be hours before you can move, so are allowed to get out of your cab and walk around on the motorway - can you book that as a daily rest ? so you can start a new 24 hour period when the motorway re-opens ? or would you just be stuffed and have to book it as POA and then pull off at the 1st opportunity when you get moving as you would be out of duty time?
You can legally put the tachograph on break in that situation.
There aren’t many situations where you would be stuck there for nine hours, but if the road was closed and you was told that you definitely wouldn’t be moving for over nine hours and was free to leave the area I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t legally book it as daily rest.
If you was stuck on the road and could only walk around the immediate vicinity of the vehicle, you could put the tachograph on break/rest and if you was there over nine hours who’s going to know that you never had what was technically a rest period
I was once stuck on the A55 when a tanker hit a bridge, the road was closed and we was given the option of reversing to the last exit or parking up for the night, I went back to the last exit but some drivers chose to park up for the night and I know there intentions were to have a night out (daily rest period) on the road, the police had no problem with it either.
tachograph:
Jenson Button:
Can you help me… we were having a discussion… if you are caught up in a major accident i.e. air ambulance got to land, and road has to be re-tarmaced and the police tell you it will be hours before you can move, so are allowed to get out of your cab and walk around on the motorway - can you book that as a daily rest ? so you can start a new 24 hour period when the motorway re-opens ? or would you just be stuffed and have to book it as POA and then pull off at the 1st opportunity when you get moving as you would be out of duty time?You can legally put the tachograph on break in that situation.
There aren’t many situations where you would be stuck there for nine hours, but if the road was closed and you was told that you definitely wouldn’t be moving for over nine hours and was free to leave the area I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t legally book it as daily rest.
If you was stuck on the road and could only walk around the immediate vicinity of the vehicle, you could put the tachograph on break/rest and if you was there over nine hours who’s going to know that you never had what was technically a rest period
I was once stuck on the A55 when a tanker hit a bridge, the road was closed and we was given the option of reversing to the last exit or parking up for the night, I went back to the last exit but some drivers chose to park up for the night and I know there intentions were to have a night out (daily rest period) on the road, the police had no problem with it either.
back in the 80’s when we had that bad snow, was told by plod to park up on the HS for the night …mind nothing had moved for 4 hours