Driving and rest time rules, tachograph and professional driver responsibilities
This domain tests Regulation (EC) 561/2006 arithmetic and tachograph discipline. Candidates lose marks less often on the headline limits than on splitting breaks, counting reduced rests and recording work correctly.
When the rules apply
Regulation 561/2006 applies to passenger vehicles designed to carry more than nine people including the driver. A category D bus is in scope whether or not it tows a trailer, so the driving and rest time limits do not change when you couple up - but the trailer makes every stop longer, and that is where planning goes wrong.
The core limits
- Daily driving: 9 hours, extendable to 10 hours twice in a week.
- Weekly driving: 56 hours; in any two consecutive weeks, 90 hours.
- Break: after 4.5 hours of driving, a 45-minute break, which may be split into 15 minutes followed by 30 minutes, in that order.
- Daily rest: 11 hours, reducible to 9 hours up to three times between weekly rests.
- Weekly rest: 45 hours, reducible to 24 hours with equivalent compensation taken en bloc before the end of the third following week.
- The tachograph records all of this: use your driver card, set the mode correctly, and make manual entries for any work done without the card.
What examiners test
The common failure is arithmetic under pressure: adding driving time across a break, or planning a reduced daily rest a third and fourth time in the same week.
Worked example
You start at 06:00. You drive 2:00 and take a 15-minute break. You then drive 2:30. Accumulated driving is 4:30, exactly the limit, and you have taken only 15 minutes of the required 45. You must now take 30 minutes before moving again; the 15 already taken counts as the first part of the split break, but only because the second part is at least 30 minutes and comes second. Had you taken 30 first and 15 second, the split would be invalid and a fresh 45-minute break would be needed.
Traps
- Splitting the break 30 + 15 and believing it valid.
- Forgetting that a 10-hour driving day is available only twice a week.
- Recording a break on the tachograph while loading luggage or coupling the trailer - that is other work.
- Checking only the weekly 56 hours and losing track of the two-week 90-hour total.