A day charter, a ferry and a digital tachograph
You drive a D1 minibus on a one-day charter from Oslo to a ski resort and back. Duty starts at 05:30 with a 15-minute walk-around check and paperwork. You then drive 2 h 20 min, spend 25 minutes loading passengers and luggage, and drive another 1 h 50 min. You take a 20-minute ferry crossing and stay on the car deck by the vehicle. From the ferry you drive 1 h 15 min and arrive at the resort at 11:55. The passengers ski until 15:35; you sleep in the bus for 1 hour and then spend 40 minutes cleaning and doing paperwork. The return trip is expected to take 4 h 10 min with one 30-minute stop, arriving back at 21:15. You are due back on duty at 07:00 the next morning for a school run. The vehicle has a digital tachograph and your driver card is inserted.
1. Calculate when the break requirement was breached and explain what you should have done differently.
Read the worked answer
Driving accumulates as 2 h 20 + 1 h 50 = 4 h 10 min by the time you reach the ferry. The 20-minute crossing is your only pause.
After 4 h 30 min of driving you must have taken a 45-minute break, which may be split into at least 15 minutes followed by at least 30 minutes, in that order. The 20-minute ferry is long enough to count as the first part (15 minutes or more), but it is not a complete break and it does not reset the counter. When you drive off the ferry you therefore have 20 minutes of legal driving left. You drive 1 h 15 min, so the 4 h 30 min limit is passed about 20 minutes into that leg, roughly 10:40, and by the resort you are about 55 minutes over.
Correct plan: take 15 minutes of break after the first driving leg, then at least 30 minutes at or after the ferry, giving 45 minutes in total before continuing - or simply take a full 45 minutes at the ferry. The arithmetic is done before departure, not on the road, because a ferry timetable is exactly the sort of thing that tempts a driver to skip a break.
2. How do you record the ferry crossing, the 1-hour sleep and the 40 minutes of cleaning on the digital tachograph?
Read the worked answer
The driver card stays in the unit from the start of the shift until the end; it is not removed for the ferry, the ski stop or the cleaning.
Ferry: switch the mode selector to the ferry/train setting so the interruption is identifiable. Whether it counts as break or as other work depends on what you actually did. Standing on the car deck supervising the vehicle is not rest, so it must be recorded as other work or availability, not break - which is precisely why the 20 minutes cannot be used as a break. If you sat in the passenger lounge and genuinely rested, it could be recorded as break.
The 1-hour sleep is rest or break, whichever fits the way you account for the day. The 40 minutes of cleaning and paperwork is other work and must be recorded as such, not left as break.
If anything was recorded wrongly - for example the unit defaulted to break while you cleaned - make a manual entry at the end of the shift and, if needed, a printout annotated with your signature, the reason and your name. Keep the printouts for the current day and the previous 28 days.
3. Check the whole day against the driving-time and rest rules: daily driving, the reduced daily rest before 07:00, and your duties as a professional driver.
Read the worked answer
Daily driving: 5 h 25 min outbound plus 4 h 10 min back is 9 h 35 min. The daily limit is 9 hours, extendable to 10 hours no more than twice between weekly rest periods. So the day is only lawful if you use one of those two extensions, and you must record which one.
Daily rest: you finish at about 21:15 and start again at 07:00, which gives 9 h 45 min - a reduced daily rest (under 11 hours). That is allowed a maximum of three times between weekly rest periods and requires no compensating rest afterwards; only a reduced weekly rest needs compensation. It does, however, count against your three, and the rest must fall entirely inside the 24 hours following the end of your previous rest.
Duties: the 15 h 45 min spread is long. Check the working-time rules as well as the driving rules - breaks after six hours of work, an average of 48 hours per week, a maximum of 60 hours in any single week. The honest conclusion is that this day is only just inside the rules and leaves no margin for a delay on the return leg; a professional driver plans the return so that a 30-minute delay does not become an infringement.