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Cards are not smart

3rd July 2003, Page 7
3rd July 2003
Page 7
Page 7, 3rd July 2003 — Cards are not smart
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The Freight Transport Association is right to call the proposed introduction of smart-card

tachographs "a dog's breakfast". We're just bemused it's taken so long for people to recognise that fad. Commercial Motor has long highlighted the flaws in the Commission's original '113' specification—which should have been officially approved back in July 1998, and the devices fitted by August 2000. You could write a book about the delays and obfuscation over smart-card tachos. Under the original spec you couldn't track vehide speeds for extended periods. On the current spec you still can't enter an exact location for the start and finish of the journey or work out who's been driving a truck if they don't insert a smart card. And before August 2004, enforcement agencies throughout Europe must be able to read a smart card (and the truck's own mass memory) at the roadside, no mean job in itself. Dog's breakfast? That's putting it mildly.

What CM can't understand is why the proposal to migrate to a smartcard device wasn't derailed from the start. Chart-based tachos aren't hightech—but they work! If ever there was a case of fixing something that wasn't broke, this is it. Unfortunately it's too late for 20/20 hindsight. And the argument over who supplies the device is, in our opinion, a side-show of a side-show.

Regardless of who supplies them to truck makers, or how well they work, the opportunity to kill off smartcard tachos has long gone. They are the future. Enjoy...

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