I am totally confused now about the rules on drivers’ hours having just spent time in mainland Spain and taking various coach trips with our group.
In particular, on one trip of about 100km in distance aboard a 57-seater coach, travelling from San Sebastian to Bilbao, I was sitting near the front of the coach and noticed that there was no card in the tachograph vehicle unit, also it was set for out-of-scope operation.
The coach had been hired by our group for the day and so was on a non-regular journey. I would therefore have expected that the driver would be required to keep a record of his work.
His English was poor and my Spanish non-existent, but I did ask him when I alighted at the end of the trip, why he was not using his tachograph – I believe he understood the question and just shrugged his shoulders.
I have searched the internet seeking an answer, even asked DVSA, and all the evidence found indicates that Spain, as a member state of the European Union, should be applying regulation EU561/2006 just as the rest of Europe in these circumstances. Is it that there are derogations in Spain that permit private hire journeys within certain provinces, or under certain distances to be operated out of scope?
I made many other observations regarding attitude to safety – mainly the state of the vehicles we travelled on during our stay, for example broken seats, non-functional seat belts, loose decency shields and drivers using mobile phones. The worst situation, and it happened several times, was the setting down of passengers on the wrong side of the road so that they had to step off into the traffic.
Colin Rowe
Clockwise Briefings
Northampton
