Drivers’ hours: changes to fines for commercial drivers

The rules will change from 5 March 2018 so lorry, bus and coach drivers who drive tired will be fined for every time they've done it in the last 28 days.

 

If you drive a lorry, bus or coach, you must follow rules on how many hours you can drive and the breaks you need to take.

 

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) can fine drivers up to £300 if they’re caught breaking the rules. They can also be prosecuted or have their vehicle immobilised.

 

At the moment, DVSA can only fine drivers for:

 

-- offences committed that day

-- ongoing offences, like manipulating tachograph records, which record drivers’

hours

READ MORE HERE: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/drivers-hours-changes-to-fines-for-commercial-drivers

Speaking personally, this can only be a good thing. Some of the strokes I've seen pulled (or at least attempted) in the past would make your toes curl.

It's now almost impossible to 'fiddle' a digital tacho successfully, even though some still try, bless 'em. So the DVSA finally getting the powers to enforce offences detected may help to keep more dangerous drivers off of the roads.

Better late than never

Good old government paper--- link tells you everything except what the hours regulations are. How is it impossible to fiddle a digital tacho?? they are electronically powered.

How is it impossible to fiddle a digital tacho?? they are electronically powered.

Of course, but the DVSA and the police are wise to 99.9% of the tricks now. The digital tacho keep an internal record of almost every event including "power failures", and it would be extremely unlikely to see more than 1 power failure within the 28 day memory of the tacho.

As an unusual amount of "failures" would be so unlikely, they might not be able to prove exactly what you had been doing while the power was interrupted, but it would just leave a driver wide open to the offence of tampering, which defeats the whole point of fiddling it in the first place.