Brussels, 21/01/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will shortly adopt a raft of measures to detect and prevent abuses of the use of the tachograph system, used to record the driving time and rest periods of professional drivers. Furthermore, the new legislation permits the use of dedicated, type-approved adaptors for light vehicles that are required to comply with the drivers' hours and tachograph rules.
First, amendments to current rules (regulation (EEC) N° 3821/85, amended in 2005) required member States to develop dedicated equipment and software that could be used to analyse the data from the digital tachograph. Second, guidelines on best practice were drawn up for national control authorities when carrying out checks of vehicles and the recording equipment, whether at the roadside, at company premises, or at workshops.
According to the Commission, this package of measures will significantly improve the methods and procedures used by control authorities in detecting and preventing the use of devices intended to defraud the tachograph system, whilst at the same time keeping unnecessary delays and inconvenience to law-abiding operators and drivers to an absolute minimum.
The regulation in force requires digital tachographs to be fitted in goods vehicles and buses which fall within scope of the drivers' hours rules and first registered after 1st May 2006. However, for some light vehicles (M1 and N1 class), it was almost technically impossible to install the equipment in such a way that it could meet all of its functional and security requirements. The new Commission regulation now corrects these technical shortcomings by allowing the use of a dedicated, type-approved adaptor for these vehicles.
The Commission wrongly announced that the measures had been adopted on Tuesday. The decision was postponed for linguistic reasons. (O.L./transl.rt)