Make sure that if doing a 15 hour spreadover that you finish your last break less at least 9 hrs 1 mins into the 15 hours, otherwise you will require to take another 15 wtd break before you finish.
OVLOV JAY:
Many people assume it’s a rolling 6 hrs. It’s not. As toowise said there are tacho rules, which are number 1, then this piddly wtd. Assuming you are on a local shunting job and your driving hrs don’t clock up quick, wtd goes like this. Show half hour after 6 hrs work. Then a further 15 mins after 9 hrs work. That leaves you 5:15 duty left. So no need to worry about a further 6 hrs period
15 minutes is minimum required, not half an hour
No requirement for a break at 9 hours at all. The remainder of any WTD break, 15 minutes or 30 minutes in total, will be before exceeding 6 hours work from the end of the first break or before the end of the shift whichever comes first.
Well it just shows that the cpc is crap then. I’ve done 3 modules, all the same with 3 different sources. One being maritime. They all said you had to show half hour without exceeding 6 hrs work and had 45mins without exceeding 9 hrs work. What’s the point of it if they can’t even teach the right regulation. If you only need 15 mins then I stand corrected
What you often find is company policy dictates a half hour break after 6 hours work. But the minimum requirement is 15 minutes to be within the law.
Winseer:
I’d say the big mistake here is working for a firm that doesn’t pay for POA.Some firms don’t recognise POA, meaning you are considererd “on duty other work” when stuck in traffic jams, tip queues, and the like.
It’s a better system though, because at the end of a 15 hour shift where you’ve taken 2x45 minutes of breaks, you’ll get net paid 13.5 hours rather than 10 hours which is what you’d get if the 3.5 hours stuck on the M25 or in a palletline-style tip queue is unpaid.
What’s more, if you only get paid for 10 hours out of the 15 worked, your firm will expect you to work 5 days on the spin like that, calling it 50 hours but actually being near 75 right? They’ve only got to drop you 4 hours in week two on this basis to keep it legal, but at what cost to you?I finish wednesday of a monday-friday shift, pull my tacho out, and say I’m not working the rest of the week. I’ve done 45 hours, and won’t do 75. As it is, I’m nodding like a dog driving around the M25 near heathrow come 7am thursday morning coming home from some midlands depot!
i don’t think you can legally use poa while stuck in a queue on a motorway, has to be other work 
why have you got to drop 4 hrs the following week to keep it legal 
wildfire:
i don’t think you can legally use poa while stuck in a queue on a motorway, has to be other work
I’m sure tachograph or coffee will swiftly correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of the rules is that POA is ok for any UNFORESEEN cause of significant delay during which you’re not doing any “work”. So wouldn’t that be a valid description of a traffic jam where you’re completely gridlocked and not moving at all? There’s no way you could have predicted that with certainty (although maybe you might have guessed it… but even that is unproveable… 
)
The ones where u move a few yards every min or so are automatically set to other work at the in between moments of rest, and will register as that on the final printout if they’re longer than 1min… (you’d need to manually select POA on the tacho for longer periods of being stuck at rest)
I always try to use POA instead of break (except for the 45 min mandatory breaks obviously), unless I know for certain that the break will be paid. THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I’m slogging my guts out on already pishy money and long hours, only to get fleeced even more and unpaid for hours stuck in a traffic jam or made to wait in an endless RDC queue while on duty… HELL NO.
It’s a shame these stupid bloody digi crappographs reset the driving time after a set amount of time on POA though - means u need to keep your own stopwatch running which you have to keep clicking on and off at drops to keep track of ur driving hours accumulated. (If u forget at even just 1 drop then yer f–ed).
The digi tachograph is a disgusting EU/big brother baswtard child which just makes life even more stressful for drivers. Complete with garbage programming/software implementation, horrendously unfriendly interface for the driver to toggle, responses which take a couple of DECADES to register or sometimes just leave you hanging on “Please wait” for even the simplest of tasks, and annoying as all f–k useless “Overspeed” and other worthless “warnings” that mean JACK SHHT. (rant over)
wildfire:
why have you got to drop 4 hrs the following week to keep it legal
I didn’t understand this either 
I’m taking it to mean there’s a 96 hour limit (50+46) on total work or something?? (from the way that winseer said it) But I don’t really know on that one, would be interested to see what he meant there too.
COOKiEEES!!:
wildfire:
i don’t think you can legally use poa while stuck in a queue on a motorway, has to be other workI’m sure tachograph or coffee will swiftly correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of the rules is that POA is ok for any UNFORESEEN cause of significant delay during which you’re not doing any “work”. So wouldn’t that be a valid description of a traffic jam where you’re completely gridlocked and not moving at all? There’s no way you could have predicted that with certainty (although maybe you might have guessed it… but even that is unproveable…
Legally for it to count as POA you should know in advance how long you will be waiting, which is something you wouldn’t usually know in a traffic jam
A period shall not be treated as a period of availability unless the mobile worker knows before the start of the relevant period about that period of availability and its reasonably foreseeable duration.
Cheers tachograph, knew you’d put me right on that. But now the question could be asked… does “in advance” in those tacho laws necessarily have to mean before your shift began though? Say you arrive at an RDC to be (unexpectedly) told “you’ve got a 2 hour queue driver…”
I now[/b] know 2 hours “in advance” of me being tipped that I’m going nowhere for at least 2hrs (except for some dingy RDC waiting room)…
Or even in a traffic jam, let’s say you hear about it on the radio before u arrived at it, or there were matrix signs advising of “xyz mins/hrs delays ahead” some miles back… technically you may know “in advance” … 
POA allowed?
Don’t forget the split daily rest rule which effectively allows you to do 15 hr days every day you work!
Unfortunately for our drivers, my gaffer asked me about this earlier in the week…
COOKiEEES!!:
Cheers tachograph, knew you’d put me right on that. But now the question could be asked… does “in advance” in those tacho laws necessarily have to mean before your shift began though? Say you arrive at an RDC to be (unexpectedly) told “you’ve got a 2 hour queue driver…”I now[/b] know 2 hours “in advance” of me being tipped that I’m going nowhere for at least 2hrs (except for some dingy RDC waiting room)…
[/quote]
To legally be counted as POA the waiting time doesn’t need to be known about in advance of the shift, it needs to be known about before putting the tachograph on POA.
In the above example you could legally use POA because you’ve been told how long you will be waiting.
In fact you don’t even need to to told the waiting time you just have to know it, for instance if you go to a particular place regularly and always have a 1 hour wait you could use POA because you know in advance from experience how long you will be waiting.
> COOKiEEES!!:
> Or even in a traffic jam, let’s say you hear about it on the radio before u arrived at it
You’d take a different route wouldn’t you
> COOKiEEES!!:
> or there were matrix signs advising of “xyz mins/hrs delays ahead” some miles back… technically you may know “in advance” …
>
> POA allowed?
Who believes what they read on matrix signs
Seriously though, I think it would depend on the circumstances, legally to be POA you have to be able to leave your workstation which in a short stop/start type hold-up on a motorway you can’t (not legally anyway) so no POA there.
On a long motorway hold-up where the road is completely closed and you’re trapped on the motorway the police will often let you know when they expect the motorway to be reopened, you can leave the vehicle to stretch your legs and you know how long you will be waiting so I’d say you could legally use POA.
RT(WT)R 2005 - Definition of “Period Of Availability”
Article 2
> “period of availability” means a period during which the mobile worker is not required to remain at his workstation, but is required to be available to answer any calls to start or resume driving or to carry out other work , including periods during which the mobile worker is accompanying a vehicle being transported by a ferry or by a train as well as periods of waiting at frontiers and those due to traffic prohibitions;
Article 6
> (1) A period shall not be treated as a period of availability unless the mobile worker knows before the start of the relevant period about that period of availability and its reasonably foreseeable duration.
>
> (2) The time spent by a mobile worker, who is working as part of a team, travelling in, but not driving, a moving vehicle as part of that team shall be a period of availability for that mobile worker.
>
> (3) Subject to paragraph (4) a period of availability shall not include a period of rest or a break.
>
> (4) A period of availability may include a break taken by a mobile worker during waiting time or time which is not devoted to driving by the mobile worker and is spent in a moving vehicle, a ferry or a train.
DonutUK:
Don’t forget the split daily rest rule which effectively allows you to do 15 hr days every day you work!Unfortunately for our drivers, my gaffer asked me about this earlier in the week…
To be honest I deliberately never mentioned split daily rest periods before in order to not over complicate things.
if you have 3 consecutive hours of rest during the shift then another rest period of at-least 9 hours after the shift and within the 24 hour period from the start of the shift you can have a 15 hour spread-over from start to end of shift without it counting as a reduced daily rest period, so you could do this every working day if you wanted to.
I could be wrong but the way I see it is that as the 3 hours have to be rest not break I imagine most drivers could probably use this rule to suit themselves, I doubt there are that many drivers who have 3 consecutive hours during the shift when they can freely dispose of the time
tachograph:
DonutUK:
Don’t forget the split daily rest rule which effectively allows you to do 15 hr days every day you work!Unfortunately for our drivers, my gaffer asked me about this earlier in the week…
To be honest I deliberately never mentioned split daily rest periods before in order to not over complicate things.
if you have 3 consecutive hours of rest during the shift then another rest period of at-least 9 hours after the shift and within the 24 hour period from the start of the shift you can have a 15 hour spread-over from start to end of shift without it counting as a reduced daily rest period, so you could do this every working day if you wanted to.
I could be wrong but the way I see it is that as the 3 hours have to be rest not break I imagine most drivers could probably use this rule to suit themselves, I doubt there are that many drivers who have 3 consecutive hours during the shift when they can freely dispose of the time
They do on containers…and they certainly do on coaches!
Stick it on break if stuck in a traffic jam - perfectly legal if you are just sitting there doing nothing