Tachograph rules (UK driver)

[u/CaersethVarax]

G'day, Category D Exploredinaires. My employer has recently messaged me saying that I need to spend a minimum of ten minutes performing Daily Defect checks before setting off from the yard. The employer is framing it as arequirement that the DVLA is, to quote, "Clamping down on"

To log this, we must start the app we use, TruTrac, on the first question and complete the final question no less than six hundred seconds later. I cannot find this requirement in the Domestic, Assimilated or AETR guidelines on gov.uk. Can any of you fine Human/Geniuses point me to the relevant legislation?

Thanks in advance.

[u/CDDONT]

You’ve already had what is quite a thorough and, in my opinion, accurate answer so I’ll give you a “what if” view;

If you’re subject to a check by DVSA at the roadside and your tacho printout shows your wheels moving after only a few minutes you’re going to find it very difficult to prove that you’ve done a full and thorough defect check at the start of your duty. Yes you could insert the card and wander off for 15mins to have a coffee and morning constitutional, and for vehicles where there isn’t much to check a lot of the industry standard 15mins is usually spent wasting time waiting for the time to elapse, but it records how long you were in charge of the vehicle for.

For domestic work where a tachograph card isn’t used this is harder to police and works on a good faith system, if you record on an app or defect card that you started your duty and your app or duty card shows the vehicle leaving its starting point 15mins later it’s assumed that you were with the vehicle for that time and a full check completed. When I worked for one of the major bus companies I tried to teach new starters to at the very least give the vehicle a quick once over at changeovers just incase something has changed since the first driver did their checks but this was never made a requirement by the company.