VOSA on the warpath

ASK THE EXPERTS SAFETY, LAW AND WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE FORUM (INTE
1

First of all i work for a coach company…but would be interested to hear what people on here might think about the possible outcomes of the situation…

A while back a VOSA officer checked one of our coaches, and found that although it was double manned (well, 1 actual driver, the other acting as an on board host type thing) only 1 card was in the tacho. This was mainly because the 2nd driver was trying to count the day as a rest day!
2nd driver put off for 9 hrs rest.

Then the officer couldn’t download the VU. The VU was functioning correctly and recording the data as evidenced by downloading the drivers card, but could not be downloaded itself.
We got a TE160DH prohibition for the VU defect. Got it changed for a new VU about 5 days later.

Now…when i started at this company 2 months ago, no VU downloads had been done for over 6 months!

Anyway, last week, our local VOSA Enforcement Officer turned up…long story short, they were pretty ■■■■■■ off to find that the vehicle in question had been downloaded that morning, but the time before that was Sept last year!
The story is much the same for the rest of the fleet. They are all current now (thanks to me) but previously they hadn’t been downloaded since around the same time!

Thankfully i am not the CPC holder!

Any ideas as to where VOSA will go with this? There are some other issues as well, such as missing mileage which is almost exclusively down to test runs after service.

2

After the recent incidents involving coaches at home and abroad. I imagine they will take it all the way. Since the digital tachograph was introduced the legal bit has always been to download the VU before 56 days and the driver card before 28.

Your VOSA man at the roadside probably just ran out of patience as a full download can take up to 1 hour, probably more if it is its first one.

I imagine they will also go through the maintenance records and try to match up some missing mileage if the boss uses the fitters road test as the reason for missing km

3

Pardon me if I’m being stupid but is the Workshop Card what should be used for test runs? I thing that’s what it’s called, maybe Garage Card?

4

mucker85:
Pardon me if I’m being stupid but is the Workshop Card what should be used for test runs? I thing that’s what it’s called, maybe Garage Card?

No the workshop card is only used for repairing and calibrating a tachograph, it carries the details of the trained installer, licence holder and workshop details. It is not a driver card in that sense, neither is a company card.

5

Ok, thanks Mr Nut