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HOW IT WORKS
Page 29
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Cards on the table
The digital tachograph units will use four smart cards
Driver card
Drivers will use the driver card in their day-to-day business.
Company card
The driver's firm will use the company card to print out and download information on each driver contained within the tacho unit. They will also allow the user to "lock in" information if the truck is sold.
Workshop card
This will be issued to 500 calibration centres around the UK where technicians, who can carry out minor repairs as well as calibrating and activating the units, will be provided with a PIN number to allow access to the tacho. Digital tachographs will be subject to a periodic inspection at least every two years.
Control card
Issued to police and VOSA, it allows an officer to download and print driver information for any vehicle they stop.
Furthermore, the DVLA has now completed its fee consultation regarding the cost of the smartcards. Regulation allowing this charge is about to come before Parliament, according to the agency's Anne Worth. She says: 'Driver and company cards will cost £38, plus £19 for replacements and exchanges. There's no charge for control and workshop cards." Each company and driver card is valid for five years.
Worth is very clear about what will happen if a company employee forgets his driver card, "It will be illegal to drive without a driver card except where a driver has lost or had his card stolen. A driver can only have one card."
This throws up the scenario of a driver being ordered back home by the boss to retrieve their card —something a haulage company can ill afford to make a habit of.
However, should a driver card be lost or stolen, a driver can still work for up to 15 days while waiting for a replacement.
As CMwent to press, the issues surrounding retrofitting had not yet been fully clarified. Barry Ricks, VOSA's digital tachograph project leader, says the worry for operators stems from apart of the legislation that appears to suggest a broken chart-based tacho would be replaced by a digital unit. But this, he says, is not the case.
"The wording actually says 'recording equipment', which includes the motion sensor, remote speeder etc. In essence the likelihood of all that needing to be replaced is pretty rare."
Ricks adds: "There is nothing to stop retrofit of digital tachographs to vehicles already in service, albeit we will require that only approved tachograph centres do so,"
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