5 most common digital tachograph rule violations

Tachogram has analysed over 70 million hours of working time data and we have noticed some patterns and common mistakes drivers make. Let us introduce the 5 most common mistakes we have identified.

Interrupting the resting period

According to regulations all of the resting periods should be uninterrupted. From the data we have analysed we have seen quite a lot of situations where drivers unintentionally interrupt their resting periods. Either by mistakenly setting tachograph to work state or driving for some very short periods of time. The one thing we see drivers are missing is the fact that the resting period is also interrupted by actions they do on tachograph. For example:

• insertion and withdrawal of driver card
• entering shift start or end countries

Some common situations we have seen are related to interrupted a weekly rest. For example, the driver goes to the office on the previous evening to get the keys to the car, pick up documents of the vehicle. He inserts his driver card and starts driving only the next morning. In this case, the weekly rest has been interrupted by the card insertion and in this case the time till the next weekly rest has been reduced dramatically and can lead to a situation that the driver must take a full weekly rest instead of reduced rest.

Too many reduced daily rests taken

Counting to three shouldn't be a problem for adults, right? Unfortunately, we see quite a lot of situations when drivers take more than 3 reduced daily rests within a work week and thus violate the required rest duration seriously. The reason why counting to three is troublesome is explained in the next couple of top mistakes - resting periods should be taken within 24 hour period and the problem with resting for precise periods of 9 or 11 hours. Read on! Read on!

Resting periods should be taken within 24 hour period

When working alone all of the daily rests should be taken within 24 hour period after starting the work. We see a lot of situations when drivers start the daily rest so late that their planned resting time does not fit within the 24 hour period. For example, if the driver has been working for 15 hours and is doing a regular daily rest of 11 hours, it turns out that he's actually doing a reduced daily rest due to the fact that only 9 hours fit within the 24 hour period after work has been started.

Resting for precise periods of 9 or 11 hours

Resting for precise 9 or 11 hours may lead to unexpected situations if you miss one minute of resting time. For example, as soon as you miss one minute of resting time from your planned 11-hour rest, the rest automatically converts to reduced daily rest and you are left with one reduced daily rest less for the rest of your work week. If you do not notice this fact early enough, you can unintentionally exceed the number of reduced daily rests within a week. For example, if you miss one minute from your 11 hour rest on the first day of work week, do 3 more reduced daily rests of 9 hours, the 3rd reduced daily rest of 9 hours will lead to an infringement of missing 2 hours in your daily rest, which is a very serious violation or the rules.

Incorrect manual data entry

Whenever drivers insert a driver card into tachograph, they are asked what they did during the period the card was removed from the tachograph. Usually having a card removed from tachograph means that the driver has been resting during the period. Unfortunately, we have seen quite a lot of situations when drivers have not entered any information or have entered information that they have been working for 9 or 24 or even more hours straight. This can lead to serious fines in roadside checks.