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Will weekend hobby affect drivers' hours allowance?
Q. An HGV driver drives under EU rules during the working week On some weekends he drives a 75-tonne vehicle, fitted with a tachograph, to motorbike race meets. Must the tachograph be used, and if so, how does this affect his working week? Can he legally drive this vehicle on a weekend if he has done a full week's driving?
ARTICLE 3(H) OF EC regulation 561/2006, covering tachograph use, does not apply to vehicles or combinations of vehicles with a maximum permissible mass not exceeding 7.5 tonnes for the noncommercial carriage of goods. Therefore, if the vehicle is 7.5 tonnes, he is exempt. This means that for this purpose the driver is not subject to drivers' hours rules.
The driver is driving a 7.5-tonne vehicle to a race, which is personal use and not the commercial carriage of goods. Therefore he does not have to use a tachograph. He might wish to use the tachograph if he drives the same vehicle during the week so he does not have the problem of missing km. All he needs to do is write 'personal use' and have some evidence of the race meeting to satisfy VOSA.
Section 5 of VOSA publication GV262 states that the driver of a vehicle that is exempt from, or out of scope of. the EU rules. is not required to use the recording equipment, even if it is fitted.