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Driving through hours changes
Page 18
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On 11 April the European regulation on EU drivers' hours rules (3820/85), which has been in force for more than 20 years, will be replaced by regulation 561/2006.
What's changing?
Driving under the EU rules is changing in three ways: • Some off-road driving is brought into scope.
• A new definition of driving is added to the regulation.
• The rules on breaks from driving will change.
Off-road driving
From April the term 'carriage by road' will include journeys undertaken partly on public roads. This means that where a vehicle travels on both public and private roads, all of the driving must be counted as such — so vehicles delivering to private sites may no longer count driving on site as 'other work'. Drivers affected by this will have less driving time available during a day, week and fortnight; they may have to take more breaks from driving and take them earller. But operations that take place entirely off the public road will remain out of scope.
Definition
Under the new rules, whatever the tachograph records as driving, is driving. This is a change from the UK definition, which currently includes time spent at the controls of the vehicle (for the purpose of controlling it) with the engine running, even if the vehicle is stationary.
Breaks from driving
The flexibility when splitting breaks from driving will be reduced. The rules will still require 45 minutes of break to be taken during or at the end of 41/2 hours of continuous or accumulated driving. But breaks can only be split into two, rather than three separate periods, and the minimum length of each period is stipulated: the first break must be at least 15 minutes long and the second at least 30 minutes long.