How often to download tachograph data, and how long to keep it

Vehicle units and driver cards both have to be downloaded at intervals, the data has to be kept, and it has to be analysable. The intervals and retention periods are set in regulation, are revised, and should be confirmed against current DVSA guidance rather than from memory — what is worth covering here is what goes wrong around them.

Downloading is not the obligation, using it is

Operators frequently have a reliable download routine and no analysis behind it. Data arrives, is stored, and nothing reads it until something prompts a look. That satisfies the collection half and misses the point: the reason for holding it is to identify infringements and patterns and act on them.

A file of undownloaded-but-retained data is a weak position. A file of downloaded, retained and unanalysed data is arguably worse, because it establishes that the information was available and nobody looked.

The gaps that appear without anybody noticing

Three recur. A vehicle off the road for a long repair, missed by a routine built around vehicles in service. A driver who leaves, whose card data was never downloaded before they went. And a vehicle sold or returned to a lessor with its unit data never extracted — which is unrecoverable once it is gone.

Each is a hole in a record that otherwise looks complete, and each is found months later when somebody tries to assemble a period and cannot.

In practice: the lessor who took the data with the truck

An operator hands back three vehicles at the end of a contract hire term. The units are downloaded on the usual cycle, which last ran three weeks earlier. Nobody performs a final download at handover, and three weeks of data goes back with the vehicles.

It surfaces during a maintenance investigation, as three unexplained gaps in an otherwise clean record — which is a worse look than the data would ever have been.

Common mistakes

• –A reliable download routine with no analysis behind it
• –Vehicles off the road for long periods dropping out of the cycle
• –Leavers whose card data was never downloaded before departure
• –No final download when a vehicle is sold, returned or transferred
• –Retaining data without being able to produce a specific period on request
• –Storing downloads somewhere that leaves with a member of staff

Analysis is where the value and the exposure both sit

Collected data that nobody reads establishes that the information was available and unexamined, which is a poor position. Analysis does not have to be elaborate: identifying infringements, looking for patterns by driver and by route, and recording what was done about them covers most of what matters.

The follow-through is the part that gets skipped. An infringement identified, discussed with the driver and recorded is a working system. One identified and filed is a list of things the operator knew about — and common infringement causes are frequently systemic rather than individual, which only becomes visible if somebody is looking across drivers rather than at each one.

Getting this right

• –Monitor for missing downloads, not just for the ones that arrive
• –Include off-road vehicles and leavers in the cycle explicitly
• –Take a final download at disposal, transfer or end of a hire term
• –Record what was done about each infringement, not only that it was found
• –Look across drivers for patterns before treating any one as an individual issue
• –Be able to produce a named period on request, from a system the business owns

One practical test: produce a named period on demand

Pick a driver and a week from eight months ago and try to produce their complete record. Then do the same for a vehicle that has since been sold or returned to a lessor.

The first is usually straightforward. The second is where gaps appear, because a final download at disposal is the step most often skipped and the one that cannot be recovered afterwards. An operator who discovers that during a maintenance investigation is discovering it at the worst possible moment.

• –Take a final download at disposal, transfer or end of a hire term
• –Include off-road vehicles and leavers in the download cycle explicitly
• –Monitor for missing downloads, not just process the ones that arrive
• –Record what was done about each infringement, not only that it was found
• –Store where the business owns it, not on an individual's machine