Tachograph inspections
It is the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and the police that inspect driving time and rest periods in Norway.
Inspections along the road and in transport companies have become more efficient with electronic aids, such as laptops and tablets. It is possible to connect a PC directly to the tachograph head in the vehicle or read the contents on a driver card using a special card reader. Thus, the data in question may be processed efficiently in purpose-made programmes.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has developed an inspection system, which has improved the efficiency of all inspection activities along the roads. Inspectors use small hand-held terminals that communicate directly with central databases (VaDis). Both the tachograph equipment and the cards are equipped with electronic keys and certificates, ensuring that in practice it will be almost impossible to use equipment that has not been approved or to manipulate the registered data.
The tachograph in the vehicle will register the vehicle's activity in the last 365 days within the following areas:
- Driving time and rest periods of all drivers who have used a driver card and who have driven the vehicle
- What drivers have used the vehicle, provided that they have used their driver card
- Whether the vehicle has been used without a driver card inserted in the tachograph
- The speed that the vehicle has had in the last 24 hours
- All incidents where vehicles have exceeded the speed limits
- Start and end location (country) for each drive
- Mileage (odometer value) at the start and end of every drive
- Manually entered data, pursuant to 1360/2002/EC
- The use of driver cards, control cards, workshop cards and company cards
- Clock adjustments
- Power failure or other irregularities
To inspect driving time and rest periods with a digital tachograph, the inspector needs to have a control card. In order to obtain a control card, the inspector must undergo the necessary training and then apply for a control card at one of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Offices.
The driver card will store data about the following issues for at least the last 28 days:
- The driving times and rest periods of the user of the card
- What company the driver has been driving for
- What vehicle the driver has driven at all times
- Start and end location (country) for each drive
- Mileage (odometer value) of the vehicle in question when the driver card was inserted and removed
- Some manually entered data