Started for a new firm on monday and we’re told to get in as much poa as possible, at my last firm we wernt allowed too use it so I don’t really know what I’m doing with it. I put it on poa for 58mins this evening (was told in advance how long I’d be waiting for), when I pulled away I noticed that it had reset my driving time. My questions is, does this mean I have 4.5hours again or carry on from before putting it on poa?
Thanks for your time.
Saaamon:
Started for a new firm on monday and we’re told to get in as much poa as possible, at my last firm we wernt allowed too use it so I don’t really know what I’m doing with it. I put it on poa for 58mins this evening (was told in advance how long I’d be waiting for), when I pulled away I noticed that it had reset my driving time. My questions is, does this mean I have 4.5hours again or carry on from before putting it on poa?Thanks for your time.
No it does not mean the driving time has been reset.
For some reason the digital tachograph wrongly counts POA as break and will reset the driving time on the tachograph when you’ve reached 45 minutes of POA.
However you should be aware that it does not reset the driving time for the regulations, if for instance you’ve done 2 hours driving then 45 minutes POA the tachograph will show the driving time as reset to 00:00 but you still only have another 2.5 hours driving time before you must take a 45 minute break.
This means that you will need some way of keeping track of your driving time because if you’re using POA you can’t rely on the tachograph to keep you straight.
I would suggest asking if you can use break instead of POA, the requirements for break are easier than POA as you don’t need to know how long you will be waiting.
I guess it boils down to whether or not you get paid for breaks 
tachograph:
However you should be aware that it does not reset the driving time for the regulations, if for instance you’ve done 2 hours driving then 45 minutes POA the tachograph will show the driving time as reset to 00:00 but you still only have another 2.5 hours driving time before you must take a 45 minute break.This means that you will need some way of keeping track of your driving time because if you’re using POA you can’t rely on the tachograph to keep you straight.
Just because the tachograph doesn’t tell you that you have driven 2 hours without entering the menu, I find it difficult to believe a driver can forget they have driven for 2, 3 or 4 hours and not had a break.
In the analogue days we could look at the disc, now we can look at the display menu
Wheel Nut:
tachograph:
However you should be aware that it does not reset the driving time for the regulations, if for instance you’ve done 2 hours driving then 45 minutes POA the tachograph will show the driving time as reset to 00:00 but you still only have another 2.5 hours driving time before you must take a 45 minute break.This means that you will need some way of keeping track of your driving time because if you’re using POA you can’t rely on the tachograph to keep you straight.
Just because the tachograph doesn’t tell you that you have driven 2 hours without entering the menu, I find it difficult to believe a driver can forget they have driven for 2, 3 or 4 hours and not had a break.
Well of course you’re going to remember if you’ve driven 2 hours but not so likely to remember exactly what driving time you’ve done done if you’ve done 4 or 5 drops with various amounts of driving time in-between.
Hence the need to keep track of the driving time 
If in doubt just do a print out to see how much break/ driving has been done, also you need to find out if you can use break instead of poa.