Which records?
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Usually a driver takes his weekly rest on Saturday/Sunday. If he is asked to produce his tachograph records the following week he will show the sheets for that week and the last day of the previous week and they will show his weekly rest.
In common with a lot of international drivers, our driver takes his weekly rest in the middle of the week. If he resumes on a Thursday and is checked by an enforcement officer the following Tuesday, it appears he will only have to produce records for that week and the previous Sunday, which will not show his weekly rest period.
This would make it impossible for enforcement staff to determine whether the driver had had a weekly rest. It is difficult to imagine this is the intention of the law. What are your views?
PSV drivers can go up to 12 days without a weekly rest. Which records would they have to produce?
Fic Article 15(7) of EC lI Regulation 3821/85—the Community Recording Equipment Regulation— requires that a driver, whether goods or passenger, should be able to produce record sheets for the current week and for the last day of the previous week on which he drove.
A week has the same definition as in EC Regulation 3820/85—the drivers' hours regulation—and it means the period between 00:00 on Monday and 24:00 hours on Sunday Therefore, for the purposes of the hours' and tachograph law, a week is fixed between those times It is not variable and it is of no consequence that a driver's actual working week or pay week may be different.
lf your driver is stopped on a Tuesday all he needs is the record sheet for that day, the Monday immediately before and the one for the "last day of the previous week on which he drove", that is, the immediately preceding Sunday.
This will make it difficult for police (Ira traffic examiner, on a spot check, to know whether the driver has taken a weekly rest period but that is not your or your driver's problem. A roadside check would also have difficulty establishing whether the 90hour driving limit in a fortnight had been exceeded or whether a driver had taken compensatory rest for reduced daily or weekly rest periods Drivers on national and international passenger services (disregarding those exempt from the EC hours' law) can work for 12 days before having to take a weekly rest period. But here, too, they arc required to have with them only the tachograph records for the current week and the last day of the previous week on which they drove.