Tachographs are an essential tool for fleet management companies. The first vehicle tachographs were launched in 1953, and more than 6 million buses and trucks used digital tachographs this year.
Drivers’ actions, including the distance travelled, speed and time spent away from the wheel, may all be tracked with the help of a tachograph.
The first use of these gadgets may seem ordinary, yet they serve a far wider use than meets the eye. Logistics and fleet management companies can use the information collected by tachographs to ensure that their drivers are in compliance with industry rules, such as rest breaks, improving their working conditions and reducing accidents. In a nutshell, tachographs are indispensable to the European road transportation industry.
But there are shifts underway. The European Parliament enacted new laws in 2020 to address problems with the working conditions of drivers, fair remuneration in the road transport industry, and unlawful cabotage activities. Cabotage is the transitory transportation of products by non-resident transport companies in an EU member state. For the new law to be met, European drivers need to upgrade to “digital tachographs”, which you can easily get from reliable platforms like Webfleet.
Still, you need to know what a digital tachograph is to understand how tachograph technology needs to be updated to meet these new rules.
What Is a Digital Tachograph?
A digital tachograph consists of four different kinds of tachograph cards, a motion sensor, and a commanding vehicle unit that are all needed in all road transport vehicles inside the EU as of 2006. These four cards serve various functions, including driver verification and fleet management. Digital tachographs, like traditional analogue ones, are used to keep track of things like how fast a vehicle is going, how far it has travelled, how long an employee has been on the road and any incidents that may have occurred while they were working.
The Benefits of Digital Tachographs for Transportation and Fleet Management Companies
Logistics and fleet management companies typically used analogue tachographs until 2006. While analogue tachographs served their main function well, they were vulnerable to manipulation. Drivers have been known to use magnets and other simple tools to alter the tachograph readings in their vehicles to evade rules and restrictions. The major purpose of tampering with tachographs is to enable drivers to stay on the road for longer than is allowed by law, which directly violates the industry’s severe obligatory resting intervals. These rules are enforced to ensure that drivers are protected and businesses in the transportation industry can compete fairly.
Transportation and fleet management companies are now better able to enforce EU standards, thanks to the mandated installation of digital tachographs. When they came out, digital tachographs were updated with better security and new ways to use them, such as connecting to DSRC.
In a Nutshell
“Necessity is the mother of innovation” is a clich?or a reason. Digital tachographs aren’t a completely novel concept, but the requirements of fleet management and transportation companies compelled engineers to find new ways to improve upon the technology. A reliable digital tachograph will give transportation and fleet management companies everything they need to adapt to the new way people move around.
