The Freight Transport Association says the DVLA is poised to change it’s advice to operators and drivers caught up in the tachograph card fiasco for a second time.
As the crisis enters its fourth week the licensing agency is planning to write to all drivers and requesting that they return their card in a pre-paid envelope only if they are faulty.
The FTA says the change in strategy is because the agency believes that not all of the 175,000 batch of cards first thought to be displaying error messages are actually causing problems.
Although the DVLA has been unable to confirm or deny this, CM.com understands that this policy will also prevent drivers from holding two valid driver cards.
The DVLA is also making a priority of automatically sending out 7,000 new company cards which are understood to no longer work in digital tacho units as well.
Ian Gallagher, FTA policy manager, says: “The DVLA will write to affected drivers and ask them if they want their card exchanging. They will replace the card for them should they want to. If it reduces the time scale from 13 weeks to 10 to nine then that has to be good.”
He adds: “The fact that they have stuck a pre-paid addressed envelope in with the letter means there’s no financial burden on the driver. Where we are not happy is that this happened in the first place.”
* An investigation into the fall-out from the faulty tacho cards is in 26 April issue of Commercial Motor.
