Continental Automotive provided a presentation on its DTCO 4.0 smart tachograph, designed to meet new legislation coming into force next year.
Keith Lloyd, Head of Product Management, outlined the new legislation – which stipulates that every vehicle registered after 15 June 2019 must be fitted with a smart tachograph – and why it has been enforced.
Says Mr Lloyd: “The essence of the legislation is to try and make it more difficult for people to manipulate tachographs and make it easier for enforcement to detect those manipulations or misuses of tachographs.”
Continental’s smart tachograph has a range of new functions, in line with the new legislation, including:
- Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which automatically logs the vehicle’s position at the start and end of the shift, after three hours of driving and after each change in activities
- Dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) for enforcement
- An Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) interface
- A new sensor that generates the speeding distance information to show that the vehicle is in motion.
“The whole point in this is trying to make it so that the DVSA only targets the vehicles that have issues. It’s there to facilitate targeted roadside checks by the authorities,” says Mr Lloyd.
“The vehicle will have an antenna in the windscreen and the enforcement will have a device at the side of the road and they will aim it at the vehicle and it will download certain information held on the tachograph.
“They will look at the data they’ve downloaded, and it will say if there are any issues, such as faulty or manipulated data.”
