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Maximum driving periods

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Table of contents.

Maximum driving for a week
What is the fortnightly driving limit.
Part time driving
Driving at the weekend
Work as drive time
What constitutes driving time

Q What is my maximum daily driving limit.

R You can drive for a maximum of 9 hrs between two daily rest periods, which may be extended up to 10hrs twice in any week. Remember that 9.01 driving is one extended drive.

Q Can this 10 hrs be on consecutive days.

R Yes, provided that you have not driven over 9 hrs on any day previous. You can in fact drive over 9 hrs on 4 consecutive days i.e., Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, providing that you have not driven over 9hrs prior to, or after these days in any of the two weeks.

Q. If I drive for ten hours on Monday, can I drive for nine and a half hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.

R No. You are only allowed to extend your driving over nine hours on two occasions. Being able to drive for an extra hour does not mean that you can split it into two, half hour periods. If you drive for nine hours and one minute you will use up one of these extended driving periods. You do not have to drive up to the maximum of ten hours to use up one of these extensions.

Q I drive over 9hrs on Monday and Wednesday, I then work for the rest of the week, have Saturday off and resume work on Sunday. Can I now drive over 9hrs again.

R No. Because although you have taken a weekly rest and started another week Sunday is the last day of the official week and because you have already driven over 9 hrs on two previous occasions you cannot drive over 9 hrs again.

Q What is the maximum driving for a week.

R The weekly driving time shall not exceed 56 hours and shall not result in the maximum weekly working time laid down in Directive 2002/15/EC being exceeded.

Q What is the fortnightly driving limit.

R In any fortnight you can drive for 90 hrs. You must bear in mind that this is a rolling fortnight and each week is used twice. At the end of the week the fortnightly drive will be that week's driving and the week before. However any week is the first week of a fortnightly drive for that week and the following week. Therefore if you drive for the maximum 56 hrs in a week you can only have driven for 34 hrs the week before and you can only drive for 34 hrs the following week.

Q What is my maximum daily duty, or spreadover.

R There is no such thing as daily duty, just daily rest and daily driving periods. However as a consequence of being able to take 9 hrs daily rest it will mean that you can be on duty for 15 hrs.

Q How long can I drive at any one time.

R You can drive for four and a half hours and then you must take a 45 minute break. This may be replaced by two breaks. The first of at least 15 minutes and the second of at least 30 minutes, taken during or immediately after the driving.

If you take more than 15 minutes but less than 45 minutes for the first break it still counts as 15 minutes. If you take less than 30 minutes for the second break it doesn't count.

Q If I drive for 4 hrs and then go onto a quarry and drive for another half an hour do I need to take a break.

R Yes. All driving now counts towards your driving period.

Q I work on a two-axle 17-ton skip loader, I start work at 6.00am break at10.30am - 11.00am and finish at 4.00pm total nine hours. I also work Saturday morning 6.00am until 10.00am, which totals 49 per week, which exceeds the fortnightly driving period of 90 hours. After explaining this to my supervisor, I was presented with a "Driver daily/weekly analysis report" dated from Wed 2nd Jan to Sat 12th Jan. My attention was drawn tithe heading "Time Total" which had four sub headings of, "shift", "duty"," drive" and "avail"

Under the heading "drive" starting at Mon 7th Jan and ending Sat 12th Jan the data read 5:38, 6:50, 5:58, 5:18, 4:36, 1:30 respectively, totalling 28.3.My supervisor says that this is the actual time I have been driving and therefore I am not exceeding the fortnightly limit. However the heading" duty" for the same period reads as follows 7:26, 8:35, 8:37, 8:17, 8:13 and 1:58, and the data in the "shift" heading is even greater. It is so confusing which figures am I supposed to go by?

R The fortnightly driving time is exactly that just the driving over a fortnight, not the total duty or shift times. As a simple example the maximum driving for any week is 4 x 9 plus 2x10 totalling 56 hours driving. However you can only perform this amount of driving if the week before you did no more than 34 hours driving and the week after you can only drive for 34 hours, totalling 90 hours in any fortnight.

The differences with the shift time, duty time, driving time and availability are;

The shift time is the total time spent on duty, between the start time of the chart and the finish time of the chart
The duty time refers to all of the time during the shift spent on driving and other work
The drive time is time during the shift spent solely on driving
The availability is basically rest taken within the shift
The time spent on other work is the duty time minus the drive time.

The calculation of your driving for any fortnight is the sum of all of the time in the drive column only. As yet there is no maximum duty time, although this will change when the Working Time Directive is introduced next year.

Q Say I were to drive for 4 hours and have my 45 min break and move onto my next drive period I drive for the same again and have another 45 min break this means I have lost a total of 60 mins driving time, if I used one of my 2 extensions is it now legal for me to drive for a total of 2 hours to take me up to my 10 hours drive time.

R Yes it is perfectly legal as long as you are able to take a minimum of 9 hours daily rest, if you have a reduction available (you only mention drive time but do not include other duty). Otherwise you would need to be able to take an 11-hour daily rest, which obviously means a total start to finish time of 15 or 13 hours.

Part time driving

Q I am writing to ask if there is any such ruling on "Part Time" driving under the EEC rules. I work at London Heathrow and a vast amount of time is spent obviously on the Airport, in other words on Private Land. I also have to deliver and collect freight from a warehouse, which is approximately 500 yards from the Airport on a Public Road. A typical round trip from our office which is in the airport, to the warehouse and back is approximately 5km bearing in mind that the first 1.5km is still on private land as is the last. I do two 14-hour shifts every four days as well as two 10-hour shifts and any one of those days I may not even have to go out of the airport so a tacho is not required. Yet I find that I am still governed by the rules of 4.5 hours driving, 45 minutes rest etc. I am lucky to do 4.5 hours driving in two weeks. Yet we still have to have a minimum of 9 hours off. Can you please shed some light on this and tell me if this is actually right.

R All of the legislation refers to ‘the driver’, whether it is the use of the tachograph, breaks driving or whatever. So if we look at the definition of a driver it is;

‘any person who drives the vehicle for a short period, or who is carried in the vehicle in order to be available for driving, if necessary.’

Therefore, even if you drove a few yards across a public road to another part of your premises, you became a driver and as such, unfortunately you must comply with all of the regulations.

Driving at the weekend

Q. Is a person allowed to drive at the weekend after doing his normal job in the week, which finishes at 1700 hrs on the Friday and is not connected to driving? Should he take 9hrs or 11hrs rest from the time he finished work.

R. Yes, but once you become a driver you must adhere to all the regulations which means that you must be able to take weekly rests in accordance with the regulations.

Work as drive time

Q. Does other work count as driving time. I drive a tanker, when we arrive at site we have to do manual work.

R Only actual driving drive time. Manual, other work, does not count towards driving time.

Q Please could you tell me if when working at the back of a mixer wagon and discharging the concrete, is this classed as other work or as driving time ? I haven't been driving this type of vehicle before and find it difficult trying to work out when to stop for breaks if this was to be the case . please could you put me right once and for all.

R Work of any kind once you have started to drive vehicles to which the regulations apply, is classed as work. Only when you are actually driving is classed as such.

What constitutes driving time

Q. Can you tell me if I don't drive a full 4.30 hours do the domestic rules apply after 6 hours.

R. If you are driving vehicles to which the regulations apply you are governed by those regulations irrespective of the number of hours that you drive, unless you qualify as one of the exceptions. You do not revert to domestic regulations unless the vehicle that you are driving is classified under the exemptions.

Q. Is it 4.30 hours of work or 4.30 hours total driving time.

R. If you are referring to the four and a half hour driving after which you are required to take a 45 minute break then it is driving only.

However Article 5 of DIRECTIVE 2002/15/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 March 2002 in relation to the working time for mobile workers, states ...........

in no circumstance work for more than six consecutive hours without a break. Working time shall be interrupted by a break of at least 30 minutes, if working hours total between six and nine hours, and of at least 45 minutes, if working hours total more than nine hours.

Therefore if you drive and work (duty on crossed hammers) for 6 hours, even if you have not driven for four and a half hours, you must take a 30 minute break in line with the working time directive.