kitkat:
they also have a 45min break to take yet another opertunity.no they’d rather sit there trying to impress the students with there driving experiance and wot type of trucks they have driven.
45 min break not required. Tuition vehicles are not being used for the carriage of goods for hire or reward & are taxed private, therefor are exempt from tacho regs.
kitkat:
I have always when actually driving moved mode switch to crossed hammers, when not driving but not resting then moved switch to square i.e. fuelling up, unloading etc and when actually resting i move switch to the bed symbol.
sorry to argue this point neil,
I don’t mind you arguing a point Jim but as it happens I ddin’t say the quote above, Linux User did. Regardless of who said it though the fact remains he wasn’t doing anything wrong using the mode switch like that, other than moving it from crossed hammers wasn’t really needed because they both mean the same thing at the moment - Other Work.
Anyway back to arguing. 
The square doesn’t, and never has meant drive Jim, there is no drive symbol on a modern tacho head, as others have said. I also put it on square before begining driving because that is the symbol I use for other work and that way it is on other work when I stop and before I change it to rest or break. Regardless of which setting it is on the driving is recorded automatically. Look at a used disc and you will see that while the vehicle is being driven there is no way of telling what mode the switch is set to, just a thick black line which is thinner when you stop, the thickness depending on which position the mode switch is in with the thinnest line being break/rest. That applies only to discs not used in an old style, 4 position mode switch, head. With those you could tell which position the mode switch was in even when driving.
knight:
But It has surprised me that a lot of experienced drivers I have spoken to don’t know tacho rules as well as they need to
Knight, one of the main reasons for that is that a great many drivers have never even read the rules. Instead they operate on a special set of rules know as the ‘My Mate Told Me,’ or MMTM Rules. Even when shown the rules in black and white they still argue and stick with the MMTM Rules instead. Us drivers have never been ones for letting the facts spoil a good ‘My Mate Told Me’ story. 
On another Tacho thread on here Gurner mentions a guy he works with who has got part of the rules totally wrong but no one can tell him he is wrong because ‘he has been driving for years.’ Wonder when the last time he picked up the rules and read them was?
The Tacho rules are are not that long, the books are never going to rival War and Peace, and they aren’t that complicated if the time is taken to read and understand them.
Driveroneuk:
kitkat:
they also have a 45min break to take yet another opertunity.no they’d rather sit there trying to impress the students with there driving experiance and wot type of trucks they have driven.45 min break not required. Tuition vehicles are not being used for the carriage of goods for hire or reward & are taxed private, therefor are exempt from tacho regs.
Beat me to it - that’s what I was going to say 
knight:
Krankee
you said that paying customers wanted to pass their test at the lowest possible price amd are not interested in ad on’s such as Tacho courses.
Can’t argue with that, but how much would it cost for training firms to make sure learners put a correctly filled in tacho at the start of each day and make sure it’s on the right mode for what ever they are doing, ie to start the habit.
Quite a few do this for a number of reasons. One being ‘Quality Assurance’, i.e. If someone fails and complains they did not receive a proportionate amount a driving on different types of road, then the charts can be examined to contest the claim.
Secondly, with the number of speed cameras about, it is useful to know who was in the driving seat and when. There was an example some months ago when a car instructor was teaching two sisters on an extended lesson. When the NIP arrived he was unable to remember who was driving at what time and on which roads. He was convicted for Failing to supply Name/Address whereas, The Hamiltons. They got treated differently.
Thanks to every body for comments and replies. The theory test covers tachos but only briefly and I read the dam book cover to cover several times, excepting the psv bits. Then when I started working with drivers they kept telling me I was wrong,didn’t argue just listened, they gave me plenty of good advice as well. Then nearly half of the firms drivers got picked up on tacho infringements. So we all had to go to a tacho session with a bloke from the RHA . Downstairs after wards some of them swore blind he had got it wrong.
I’d better explain that half the firms drivers geting caught at the same time wasn’t a strange coincidence. Some malicious prat nicked a mega load of old tachos so the firm couldn’t produce them. So the powers that be went through the rest with a very fine toothed comb.