Dienstleistungsportal Bayern

For their protection and in the interest of road safety, there are special regulations for drivers and co-drivers of trucks with a maximum permissible weight of more than 3.5 tons (3.5 t perm. HM) and buses. These apply uniformly throughout the European Union. They regulate, among other things, the permissible daily and weekly driving time, the minimum breaks to be taken during the journey, and the daily and weekly rest period for the driving personnel.

There are also national regulations on the recording of driving times, including breaks, and rest periods (recording equipment or handwritten records for vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of over 2.8 t and not more than 3.5 t).

Moreover, the driving personnel may not be paid according to the distances covered or the amount of goods transported.

On the road, checks are carried out by the police and the Federal Office for Logistics and Mobility (BALM). Here, an individual vehicle is checked for, among other things, current compliance (current day and previous 28 calendar days) with driving and rest time regulations.

In the companies, systematic checks are carried out by the labor inspectorates at the governments with regard to compliance with the social regulations in road traffic. As a rule, the entire fleet or larger parts of the fleet are checked over a longer period of time during these inspections. In particular, these checks are intended to verify the proper disposition of the vehicles and drivers used by the entrepreneur, transport manager and dispatcher.

Violations of the social regulations in road traffic are usually administrative offenses for the driver as well as for the entrepreneur and persons commissioned by the entrepreneur (e.g. dispatcher), which can be punished with fines.

The amount of the fines is based on the nationally uniform "Catalogue of fines and warnings for driving personnel law" (publication of the State Committee for Occupational Safety and Safety Engineering (LASI) - LV 48). In addition, when so-called most serious violations (Regulation (EC) No. 1071/2009 Annex IV) are established and punished, an official examination procedure is carried out against the transport manager or the transport company with regard to the withdrawal of reliability.