Year: posts for 2018

DVSA’s Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness updated

The DVSA’s  guide to maintaining a roadworthy fleet has been updated and published on Gov.UK. The guide provides a useful reference on how to keep heavy…

Drivers’ hours law and tachographs post Brexit

With the UK leaving the EU at the end of March 2019 now only 5 months away, many operators are asking what this means for drivers’…

Traffic Commissioners Annual Report 2017-18

The annual report for 2017 to March 31st 2018 provides information on major aspects of the Traffic Commissioners’ judicial, regulatory and administrative roles. As independent regulators…

Banned for 8 years for pretending to have a Transport Manager

The Office of the Traffic Commissioner revealed that a coach operator who failed to tell them that they didn’t have a Transport manager was banned from…

Paying the price for ineffective maintenance

A skip operator’s application to increase the fleet from two to six vehicles was refused and the licence revoked for poor maintenance. When the DVSA visited…

Earned Recognition “the gold standard”

Earned Recognition was launched by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) as business as usual at the CV Show in April. Since then over 50…

DVSA’s Annual Review and 5-year strategy

The latest Annual Review from the DVSA sets out some of the work the agency will be doing in 2018-19 and reports on highlights from 2017-18.…

Managing basic vehicle safety checks

A recent study reported in CommercialFleet revealed that almost 20% of fleets surveyed did not carry out walkaround vehicle safety checks. 63% said they did conduct a…

DVLA guidance for professional drivers

The DVLA leaflets for Large Goods Vehicles (LGV) and Passenger Carrying Vehicles (PCV) drivers provide useful guidance for new drivers and are a good reminder for…

Action against vocational licences for mobile phone offences

The Office of the Traffic Commissioner has issued a reminder that professional drivers caught using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving could face action against…

Setting the standard with DVSA’s Earned Recognition

According to a recent article in Commercial Fleet the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) believes the Earned Recognition scheme could set the standard and become…

How do you know if a new job will cause a drivers’ hours infringement?

A customer asked me recently if there was a tool from Descartes that allows them to pre-empt any potential drivers’ hours issues when they look to…

Are tachographs coming to vans to manage drivers’ hours?

In an attempt to regulate drivers’ hours of smaller commercial vehicles, proposals from members of the European Parliament’s transport committee would like to see all vans have…

What do Smartanalysis users think of the DVSA’s Earned Recognition?

Following a twelve-month pilot, the DVSA’s Earned Recognition went live on April 24th. Descartes were part of the pilot as a validated systems provider for KPIs…

1 in 20 drivers stopped have breached drivers’ hours law

The Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) reported that more than 1 in 20 of goods vehicle and bus drivers stopped in the past 12 months…

Are HGV drivers the worst offenders for not wearing a seatbelt?

According to the results of a recent police operation in Suffolk evidence suggests they are! Police in Suffolk issued over 200 Traffic Offence Reports (TORs) after…

3 in 4 drivers yet to complete 35 hours CPC

According to research carried out recently by DCPC Training Contractor, Fleet Source, only 24% of drivers have completed the 35 hours CPC training required by 2019…

On-the-spot fines for historic drivers’ hours offences start on 5th March 2018.

As of Monday 5 March 2018 the DVSA will start issuing on-the-spot fines for historic drivers’ hours offences committed in the previous 28 days. In a single…

Record number of drivers sent for retraining

In 2017 a record number of over 1.4 million drivers were sent to offender retraining courses by the police. This includes more than one million caught…