Drivers & hours
What are the working time rules for drivers?
Working time rules limit the total time a mobile worker spends working, separately from the drivers' hours rules. They cover driving, other work and periods where the driver must remain available.
They are a different regime with different limits and a different reference period, and compliance with drivers' hours says nothing about compliance with these.
Periods of availability — waiting where the driver knows in advance how long it will be and is free from duties — are treated differently from other work, and getting that classification right is most of the practical difficulty.
Records have to be kept and the reference period averaged, which makes this an administrative exercise rather than something a driver manages in the moment.
What goes wrong in practice
- Working time assumed to be covered by drivers' hours monitoring.
- Periods of availability recorded as other work, or the reverse.
- Reference period averaging never actually calculated.