Anton Balkitis and Lucy Wood – Rothera Dowson Solicitors
Another step towards operating on a level playing field was made last month when the European Commission proposed overhauling legislation in order to crack down on tachograph fraud.
Although the proposals have not yet been adopted and progress could take time, there are reasons why these plans could make the lives of compliant operators easier.
The EC wants to rely on satellite positioning technology to replace the manual recording of driving time and rest periods – an obvious area exploited by fraudsters to compete unfairly across Europe. This would also reduce operators’ administrative burden, to the tune of €349 million per year, if the EC is to be believed.
It also wants roadside checks to be made more efficient through the reliance on “remote communication”, which would target vehicles more likely to be breaching laws and allow complying drivers to work unheeded.
Again, the EC gives this a price saving for operators of €34.5 million. A further €100 million would be saved if the driving licence and digi-tach driver cards were merged.
It is much too easy at the moment for drivers to hand around cards for fraudulent purposes and therefore splicing the two together would make the practice more difficult.
Mindful of that fact that technological progress often outstrips legislative tinkering the EC also wants tachograph specifications to be continuously updated so that a high level of security is maintained and fraud and manipulation are reduced.
Finally, there is a call for workshops entrusted to install and calibrate tachographs to be subject to higher standards.
These are all major changes to current laws, but the Commission claims approximately one fourth of vehicles checked by national police or enforcement officers are breaching the rules and the annual cost of compliance is still too high.
It says this scale of non-compliance results in driver fatigue, which can then be estimated to produce an increase in societal costs of accidents at a huge €2.8 billion.
In response tacho manufacturers, distributors and trade associations say they are pleased with the EC’s proposals and believe they will serve to help drive out rogue operators, making the lives of UK operators much easier.
However, questions remain over how exactly they will be implemented, if the proposals are adopted.
It is hoped that a rolling programme affecting all new vehicles will take place, rather than forcing all six million existing European trucks and buses to retro-fit. However, that as an exercise in itself would take years to complete.
The Freight Transport Association describes the proposals as “genuinely helpful”, although it does not appear to be convinced about where the EC has got its cost saving figures from.
But it is the International Road Transport Union that raises the most doubts about the plans. Although it welcomes the elimination of manual recording and the creation of an “open telematics platform”, it warns that the EC is relying too much on increasingly costly and complex technology and claims that it will eradicate fraudulent activity are wide of the mark.
The fitting of every device will not make a digital tachograph tamper-proof, it argues, and if someone is determined enough then a satellite signal can be blocked. Instead it says the only way to stop rule breakers is to plough resources into more targeted enforcement and make the sanctions for those found guilty of tachograph fraud tougher than they are already.
As is often the case the answer is likely to be a combination of the two, but whatever the outcome it goes without saying that transport lawyers will be scrutinising the details and their impact on the haulage industry.
Anton Balkitis and Lucy Wood are road transport lawyers at specialist transport law firm Rothera Dowson Solicitors. For more information contact Anton or Lucy on Tel: 0800 046 3066 or visit their dedicated website: www.keepmeontheroad.co.uk – you can also follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/keepmeontheroad
Published: 08/08/2011
