I got caught out in this thing on the M42 yesterday. I didn’t see any signs until after I passed junction 10, by which time it was too late. So it took me just shy of three hours to get from halfway between 9 and 10, off the motorway, around the roundabout which was gridlocked, and to a place I could stop for my daily rest. So that was just shy of a 16 hour day.
After a long shift like that, and extra long, printouts included, do I have to take an 11 hour break or can I do a nine?
Or do I have to take my break plus the extra hour that I overworked.
Take 9 or 11 off its up to you the driver.But it will only count as a 9 hour break if you get stopped explaine what happend and they wont do anything you will get an infringement but its was a unforseen incident.
I normally do 3 reduced rest breaks in the week anyway, and have a lot of work piled on. One of the reasons why I’m planning a change.
But my tacho hours software on my PDA suggested I had not taken enough rest but I had had my 9 off hence asking.
This is only the 3rd over 15hr duty I’ve had in 7 months. Perhaps even that is too much.
After the second one, the boss told me I should not be working over 13 hours and that extra 2 is reserved for emergencies. Then two days later he plans a run that is 14 hours long.
Did you have the traffic bulletin button selected on your radio, this notifies motorists of incidents of each area you pass through ?
Look for TP button, but every radio may have a different button .
I heard about the closure on the radio .
You can have a reduced daily rest period even though you’ve gone over the 15 hour spread-over.
Do 2 printouts and write an explanations on both of them so you can hand one in when your card is downloaded, you’ll need to keep the other printout with you for at-least 28 days.
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice but it will already be explained on the printout.
I’m know you know what I meant but I’ll say it anyway before I get pulled up by anyone
When I said “you can have a reduced daily rest period even though you’ve gone over the 15 hour spread-over” you’ve actually had a reduced daily rest period anyway, what I meant of course is that you can have 9 hours rest rather than having to have the 11 hours rest.
tachograph:
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice
What’s an infringement notice? Is this something that comes from the company, or does DVLA detect it and send you an angry letter? Reason I ask is because I had issues with my tacho last night, took about 20 minutes to sort out when I only had a few spare minutes left on my 6 hours. It wouldn’t give my card back, so pressed loads of buttons, phoned for help, pressed some more buttons, shunted the truck into the road. THEN it ejected my card. Hoping that a fault with the tacho is a reasonable excuse to go over by a few minutes. And hopefully for shunting the truck from the middle of the road to the side of the road without the card as I wasn’t tempted to put my card back into a faulty machine.
tachograph:
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice
What’s an infringement notice? Is this something that comes from the company, or does DVLA detect it and send you an angry letter? Reason I ask is because I had issues with my tacho last night, took about 20 minutes to sort out when I only had a few spare minutes left on my 6 hours. It wouldn’t give my card back, so pressed loads of buttons, phoned for help, pressed some more buttons, shunted the truck into the road. THEN it ejected my card. Hoping that a fault with the tacho is a reasonable excuse to go over by a few minutes. And hopefully for shunting the truck from the middle of the road to the side of the road without the card as I wasn’t tempted to put my card back into a faulty machine.
An infringement is just the companies way of showing that they’re doing their job and educating you about your errors, it’s nothing to worry about.
An infringement usually consists of a letter spelling out your sins, unless you get a lot of them you can sign it learn from it and forget it.
tachograph:
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice
What’s an infringement notice? Is this something that comes from the company, or does DVLA detect it and send you an angry letter? Reason I ask is because I had issues with my tacho last night, took about 20 minutes to sort out when I only had a few spare minutes left on my 6 hours. It wouldn’t give my card back, so pressed loads of buttons, phoned for help, pressed some more buttons, shunted the truck into the road. THEN it ejected my card. Hoping that a fault with the tacho is a reasonable excuse to go over by a few minutes. And hopefully for shunting the truck from the middle of the road to the side of the road without the card as I wasn’t tempted to put my card back into a faulty machine.
Some tachos need the ignition on before you can eject the card. Could this be the reason yours wouldn’t eject?
tachograph:
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice
What’s an infringement notice? Is this something that comes from the company, or does DVLA detect it and send you an angry letter? Reason I ask is because I had issues with my tacho last night, took about 20 minutes to sort out when I only had a few spare minutes left on my 6 hours. It wouldn’t give my card back, so pressed loads of buttons, phoned for help, pressed some more buttons, shunted the truck into the road. THEN it ejected my card. Hoping that a fault with the tacho is a reasonable excuse to go over by a few minutes. And hopefully for shunting the truck from the middle of the road to the side of the road without the card as I wasn’t tempted to put my card back into a faulty machine.
Some tachos need the ignition on before you can eject the card. Could this be the reason yours wouldn’t eject?
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I’ve found that to be the case in a few wagons I’ve driven… comes up with error saying unable to eject card and has a small symbol looking like a bolt of lightening next to the message.
Nah, I spent ages switching the ignition on/off, key in, key out. I looked up the error code 34 and it was something about not being able to eject whilst moving, so I shunted the truck to give the speedo a bit of a poke which worked. All that faffing around put me over time, but only by like 10 minutes or so, did a printout anyway as it can’t hurt.
Call me blasee, but I wouldn’t be concerned by a couple of mins over when all the other activity being recorded on the tacho will show that you’re fannying around and not actually driving-driving. As others have said, 2 printouts, staple 1 of them into your diary and write up an explanation on both then fuggehtaboutit.
tachograph:
As has been said you will probably still get an infringement notice
What’s an infringement notice? Is this something that comes from the company, or does DVLA detect it and send you an angry letter? Reason I ask is because I had issues with my tacho last night, took about 20 minutes to sort out when I only had a few spare minutes left on my 6 hours. It wouldn’t give my card back, so pressed loads of buttons, phoned for help, pressed some more buttons, shunted the truck into the road. THEN it ejected my card. Hoping that a fault with the tacho is a reasonable excuse to go over by a few minutes. And hopefully for shunting the truck from the middle of the road to the side of the road without the card as I wasn’t tempted to put my card back into a faulty machine.
Its from the company. The software they use to monitor drivers hours will flag up any infringements but always look carefully at them because the system has been known to flag up false positives.
If the head unit says “Ejection not possible”, turn the ignition on but don’t start the truck. You know the setting where the dash lights up and you are hear the blowers start kicking in. You should be able to eject the card then. I had a Premium where I could eject the card without the keys being in the ignition, got stuck in an Axor for a bit and I could not work out why my card wouldn’t come out. Turns out, I need the ignition on in that truck.
Most trucks I drive seem to need ignition on to eject, but not helpful when its dark and you cant see what’s on the screen.
Little extra - if you get the infringement letter, it might say things like £200 fine. That doesn’t mean you being charged 200 squids, it just means in theory VOSA could fine you if you were stopped and they decided you had deliberately tried it on.
As for not ejecting, sometimes its the machine still writing to the card. Best give them a couple of mins just to sort themselves ideally with ignition on.
