I apologise for starting this but I read the other one and it seems to have gone away from the point of the original question, with someone even comparing train driving with hgv.

Some things stated are true in that this was a crises that could easily have been avoided to a large degree, and also that money and the gov moving the goalposts are mostly to blame.

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The money,

Hgv 1+2 are the top driving licences, let us understand that, and both allow unlimited driving of rigid and trailer driven vehicles in their respective categories, as such it has to be hard and not cheap, you would not expect the cost of training a fighter pilot to be the same as training someone to pilot a cessna.

The problem was always funding, when I got mine, funding was available from either the european union, the gov or some companies if you stayed there long enough. Like all crafts, if you do not invest in new talent the well will run dry, so gov funding stopped, even before leaving brexit euro funding stopped, and most but not all companies that used to pay for training stopped doing so.

Longer Hours ...

Vosa, who are still active within DVSA, state that you are only driivng when the wheels are moving, and because of digital recording can accurately record minute by minute modes ( driving , other work and rest ), this is a big issue and one VOSA have been afraid to address, because their version of "driving" totally contradicts the dictionary definition, and that of the police.

Driving in the dictionary states : driving is getting in the vehicle for the purposes of controlling its movement, whether stationary or not. if the police see you coming out of the pub clearly drunk then they do not have to wait for the wheels to be moving before arresting you for drink driving.

Every time, a truck stops, it goes from driving to other work, so, according to vosa, other work means .. stopping at traffic lights, stopping at roundabouts, stopping at pedestrian crossings etc etc etc, in fact any time that vehicle stops you are doing other work and NOT DRIVNG according to vosa.

This means for drivers ( esp rigid drivers ) that the 4.5 hour rule goes out of the window and has not meant 4.5 hours from the time you start for a long time with the tacho stealing time from the drive, especially doing multi drop in a city, and you are using domestic driving hours for your first break, so in this case a day can be .....

0600-0800 : 2 hours

0800-0815 : 15 min break

0815-1215 : 4 hours

1215-1245 : 30 min break ( resets both domestic and tach hours )

1245-1445 : 2 hours

1445-1500 : 15 min break

1500-1900 : 4 hours

1900-1930 : 30 mon break ( resets both hours as above )

1930-2200 : 3 hours driving.

And after 9 hours rest which includes the time getting in and out of work, plus meals plus sleep, you can then start your day all over again. is it any wonder with a workload like that in 2 out of 3 days people are leaving ?

This did not legally happen in the days of the paper tachograph.

Vosa use the excuse that one of the modes has to be a default mode which is true, but why not default it to the only mopde you cannot set manually ?? which is driving. yes you cannot set driving as the mode on the tacho manually, you can only sellect rest, poa or other work but not driving. So when the tacho steals driving time of you there is nothing you can do about it.

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Edited by A Driver since 1988, HGV 2006 on 31/08/2021 at 19:52