Gone are the days when it was alleged you could
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interfere with a tachograph by putting a foil-wrapped bacon butty on the dashboard. Digital tachographs are now fitted to more than one third of all trucks. The most common way of tampering with them is to place a strong magnet next to the kit's sender unit in the gearbox, which can show a vehicle at rest when it is being driven.
* Ghosting is also common. This can involve inventing a phantom driver with a different tachograph card, although the vehicle is still being driven by the original driver, or by a driver reaching the end of his hours swapping to a different vehicle with a new card.
The most elaborate fraud is to introduce a Japanese-built, radiocontrolled interrupter device, which shows the vehicle either travelling slower than it actually is or being stationary. Correct readings can be restored at the press of a button.
Vehicles can be driven without a tachograph card or the device can be switched on after the vehicle has been driven for some time.
Analogue tachographs can be manipulated manually by bending the speed stylus while making manual entries on the chart, by placing elastic bands or foam rubber over the speed stylus, which show slower speeds or by cutting the centre out of the chart.
One sad case that did not escape prosecution was when Peter Nottley was faced with an £80 speeding fine. To try to get out of this, he hired another vehicle for £150 and did exactly the same journey the next day, keeping to legal speed limits and then changed the date on the second vehicle's tachograph, which he used as evidence that he had not broken the law. When this was discovered, he only escaped a custodial sentence because of his ill health.