Improving road safety and ensuring fair competition in road transport in the EU. The Specification for a new generation of digital tachograph for trucks and buses was agreed informally by the Irish presidency and European Parliament negotiators on Tuesday 14 May 2013.  The proposed Smart tachograph will enable enforcement agencies to read on-board recording devices from a distance, making it easier to police drivers’ hours. Under draft rules the new smart tachograph would be fitted to new vehicles within three years once the Commission has set out the final technical specification.   Within 15 years, they would have to be fitted, or retrofitted, to all EU-registered trucks and buses in international transport. The Smart tachograph will help to ensure that rules apply fairly and equally to all trucks over 3.5 tonnes on EU roads. They will also enable easy downloading of tachograph data to analysis solutions such as Smartanalysis and remote checking, via wireless data transmission to control authorities. The number and duration of roadside checks could be reduced as the authorities will be able to focus on vehicles with suspicious data which has been read remotely. Mrs Silvia Ticau (S&D, RO), who led the EP negotiating team said "Parliament's main goal was to improve enforcement of social legislation and to verify that drivers and companies respect driving and resting times, so as to better protect drivers' working conditions and prevent social dumping". Trucks of less than 7.5 tonnes will be exempted if they carry materials, equipment or machinery for the driver’s use in the course of his work and used within a radius of 100 km of the base of the undertaking, provided that driving the vehicle is not the driver’s main activity. Mrs Ticau will present and discuss details at the next meeting of the Transport and Tourism Committee, on 29 and 30 May. The consolidated text needs to be approved by Parliament and the Council.