First time I handed over a tachograph printout at roadside, I'd taken it because my card had flagged something — I wasn't sure what. The DVSA officer read it in about 30 seconds and pointed to a line near the bottom. I nodded like I understood. I didn't. He knew I didn't. It was embarrassing and I went home and learned to read the thing properly.
It's not complicated. But it's also not obvious the first time you're looking at 12 lines of thermal printout in the dark at the side of the A1 near Newark.
What the header tells you
The top section of any digital tachograph printout is the header. It carries the unit's details — the vehicle registration, the tachograph unit serial number, the date and time the printout was generated, and the software version on the unit. Most of this you'll never need. The date and time matters — it tells you if the printout is current, and it gives DVSA the reference point for comparing the printout data against what the unit holds internally.
Below that, you'll see two card slots: V1 and V2. V1 is the active driver's slot — your card. V2 is the co-driver slot. If there's a second driver, their card number appears in V2. If you're solo, V2 shows empty. Each slot prints the cardholder name and card number.
Check those card numbers. If they don't match your card — for instance, if someone's left their card in the unit from a previous shift — the printout is going to cause confusion at roadside. It happens more than it should, usually at shared vehicles or hire units where cards get swapped without a proper book-off.
The activity bars: what the chart is showing you
The main body of a driver activities printout is a 24-hour chart, usually represented as a horizontal timeline from 00:00 to 23:59. Each period is shown as one of four modes: driving (D), other work (W or a hammer symbol depending on the unit), availability (A or a person-in-passenger-seat symbol), and rest (a bed icon or just blank space depending on the format).
Different manufacturers — Stoneridge, VDO, Intellic — print these in slightly different formats. The VDO DTCO prints a very clean graphical bar. The Stoneridge SE5000 prints something that looks more like a text-based table. The data is the same; the presentation varies.
What you're looking for: how long is the D segment? That's your driving time. Is there a 45-minute block of rest or blank somewhere in the day after no more than 4.5 hours of D? That's your break. Are there any long blocks of D without a corresponding rest block? That's where an infringement will be flagged.
Totals section
Below the activity bars, most printout formats show a totals section. This gives you the day's cumulative numbers: total driving time (in hours and minutes), total rest time, total other work, total availability. This is the quick-read section. A DVSA officer scanning a printout at roadside will go straight here first.
If your total driving time is over 9 hours (or over 10 hours when you've used one of your permitted two-per-week 10-hour extensions), that's a flag before they've even looked at the activity bars. If your longest unbroken rest block between driving periods is under 45 minutes and you've been driving for more than 4.5 hours, that's another flag.
The totals won't always show a clear infringement — it depends on the unit and what it's calculated. But they give DVSA enough to know whether to look deeper into the activity data or hand the printout back.
Infringement codes and events
Some printout formats include an events and faults section. This is where the unit logs things like: card insertion without prior rest, card removal before proper rest, driving without a card, power interruption to the unit, motion detected while the card was out.
The infringement section (separate from faults) logs when the unit calculated a regulation breach. Break violation is the most common: driving time exceeded 4.5 hours without a valid 45-minute break. Daily rest violation: the unit calculated less than 9 hours of rest in the daily rest period. These appear with a timestamp and a code.
Not all digital tachographs print infringements the same way. Older first-generation digital units (pre-2013) may not summarise infringements on the printout at all — you need to download the data and run it through analysis software to see them. Smart tachographs (required on new vehicles from 2019) tend to print more clearly structured event data.
The key thing: if there are infringement codes on your printout, read them before handing it over. Know what they say. "I haven't looked at it" isn't a good answer when an officer points to an infringement code on your own printout.
When to take a printout and what to write on it
If you're driving without your card — expired, lost, stolen, damaged — you take a printout at the start of every shift and at the end of every shift. That's Article 35 of Regulation 165/2014. Each printout needs your name, your card number or driving licence number, and your signature. Hand-written on the printout itself. If you don't sign it, it's not a valid record.
If you're carrying your card and it's working normally, you don't need to take a printout during a shift. The card and the vehicle unit are recording automatically. You only need a printout at roadside if DVSA asks for one, or if the unit malfunctions and you need to generate a manual record of the period.
One thing that trips people up: printouts feed through thermal paper. That paper fades. I've had printouts go almost blank after six weeks in a warm cab. If you're keeping printouts as records — which you should be for the 28-day period — keep them out of direct sunlight and away from heat. Otherwise by the time DVSA asks for them, they're blank.
Reading it in a hurry at roadside
DVSA check: officer asks for card and printout. Here's the quick read:
One — header confirms it's your unit and your card. Two — scan the activity bars: is there clearly a break after each 4.5-hour block? Three — look at the totals: is total driving under 9 hours (or under 10 if you've extended)? Four — check the events section for any infringement codes. If the answer to all four is clean, you're fine. Hand it over and wait.
If any of those four isn't clean — if you can already see a problem before the officer reads it — don't pretend you haven't noticed. Officers do this every day. Trying to talk around something that's already on the printout makes it worse. Just be straightforward about what happened and what the record shows.
It's only embarrassing the first time you can't read your own printout at roadside. After that, you learn it once and it stays with you.
If you want a daily view of your tachograph activity without waiting for a roadside check to find out what it shows, ShiftOwt displays your EU 561 compliance position in real time — £5.99/mo for drivers, agency pricing on request.