It was a Tuesday at about 11:30 in the morning, northbound M6 just past Junction 18, Knutsford. A DVSA officer stepped out of the lay-by holding a red lollipop, pointed at me, pointed at the hard shoulder. My first pull in four years.
Here's what happens after the lollipop. Nobody tells you the order. Nobody tells you what they're looking for first. So you sit there in the cab with your hands damp on the wheel and make it worse for yourself. I'll walk through exactly what happened to me — and because mine ended with a verbal, a tidy folder, and no PG9, it's a useful baseline for what "good" looks like.
Why you got pulled in the first place
DVSA don't pull at random. Well, they do, but the odds aren't random. Your vehicle's OCRS score — Operator Compliance Risk Score — is visible to the officer at the lay-by from your number plate via their in-car system before you even stop. Red OCRS operators get pulled more. Amber get pulled occasionally. Green get pulled rarely.
They also target specific routes. M6 north of the J18 check site. The A14 corridor around Felixstowe. The M20 between the tunnel and Dover. These are the DVSA hunting grounds. Run those corridors enough and eventually you'll get waved in.
My OCRS was green that day. I still got pulled. The officer told me later they were running a themed day on digital tachograph records.
The pull-over — minute one to five
Lollipop. Indicator on. Slow down. Pull into the check site or the hard shoulder if directed. Kill the engine. Hazards on. Stay in the cab.
Do not get out. Do not reach for anything. The officer will come to your window. They decide when you get out.
My officer — hi-vis, stab vest, DVSA epaulettes — came up to the passenger side because that's safer on the motorway. Opened with: "Afternoon. Just a routine check. Got your licence, tacho card, and paperwork?"
I said yes, handed over my driving licence and my tacho card. Didn't volunteer anything else.
Rule one: answer what's asked. Don't elaborate. Don't explain rules back to them. They know the rules. They want to know your rules, and whether you've broken any.
The card download — minute five to twenty
First thing they do with your tacho card: plug it into their handheld. This takes a minute or two. It downloads the last 28 days of data off the card and displays it in their software.
They are looking for:
- Daily driving over 9 hours (or 10, twice a week)
- Weekly driving over 56 hours
- Fortnight driving over 90 hours
- Daily rest under 11 hours (or 9 reduced, max 3 times per week)
- Weekly rest under 45 hours (or 24 reduced, with compensation tracked)
- Break under 45 minutes after 4.5 hours of driving
- Multi-manning records
- Missing records, gaps, unusual patterns
Anything that pops red on their screen becomes a conversation. Anything yellow might become a conversation. Anything green they skim past.
They will look at the last 28 days at the roadside. Not just today. If you ran a most-serious infringement three weeks ago and it hasn't been reconciled, they can issue a fixed penalty for it today. The 28-day look-back is real and it surprises drivers.
The vehicle unit — minute ten to twenty-five
While the card's still displayed on their handheld, or once they've pulled it, they may ask for a vehicle unit download. That pulls from the tacho head itself, not your card. It shows the vehicle's activity with whichever cards were in it.
They're cross-referencing. Did the card data match the vehicle data? If the vehicle was moving while the card was in Break mode, that's called "driving without a card" or fraudulent mode selection, and it's a most serious infringement. Instant interest from the officer.
On a modern Stoneridge or VDO digital head, the download is done with their key. Couple of minutes. You don't do anything. Stay in the cab.
The paperwork conversation — minute fifteen to thirty
Once they have the tacho picture, they move to paperwork. They'll ask for:
- Insurance certificate or MID reference
- Operator's licence disc (or digital record)
- MOT certificate
- Any load documentation — CMR, delivery notes, hazardous goods paperwork if applicable
- Walkaround check record
- Driver CPC qualification card
I carry all of this in a folder in the passenger door pocket. Takes 30 seconds to produce. Officer appreciates it. Check moves faster. Professional impression matters — the officer has discretion, and a driver who produces a tidy folder gets a friendlier end to the interaction than a driver rummaging in a glove box for a six-month-out-of-date MOT print.
The walkaround — minute thirty to sixty
If the paperwork and tacho are clean, they may wave you off. If there's any interest, they go to the vehicle itself.
Tyres. Lights. Reflectors. Loading — including the tail-lift, straps, curtainsider tension if applicable. ABS and EBS warning systems on the dash. Cab mirrors. Number plates and O-licence disc visible.
Any defect they spot that's roadworthy-related can trigger a prohibition:
- PG9 — immediate prohibition. Vehicle cannot be moved until the defect is fixed. You're parked up where you are, or towed to a depot. The clearance inspection must happen before you move under your own power.
- PG9a — a variation, often used for specific immediate prohibitions with narrower scope.
- PG10 — delayed prohibition. The defect is noted, you can continue your journey, but you have a deadline (often 10 days) to have it fixed and cleared.
Severity depends on what's wrong. A bald tyre is PG9. A misting headlight might be PG10. A missing reflector depends on officer discretion.
The graduated fixed penalty
If the card download or paperwork shows an offence, the officer can issue a Graduated Fixed Penalty Notice. The amounts for drivers' hours offences are banded by severity:
- Less than 1 hour over the limit: £100
- 1 hour up to (but not including) 2 hours: £200
- 2 hours and over: £300
They can issue up to 5 fixed penalty notices per encounter, covering infringements committed in the previous 28 days. That's a theoretical £1,500 in one stop if you've been really creative with your daily rests over the last month.
Drivers without a verifiable UK address pay a financial deposit on the spot at the equivalent amount. If you've accumulated 3 or more offences, the deposit can be £1,500.
The penalty notice is a conditional offer — you can accept and pay, or you can contest it in court. Drivers who contest rarely win on hours offences because the card data is the evidence and it doesn't lie.
How my check ended
Officer asked about a 14-minute break-under-45 flag from 17 days earlier. I'd taken a 31-minute break at Stafford Services northbound and then driven on. The analyser at my depot had flagged it, the TM had spoken to me about it, I'd noted it and moved on. I explained all that. Showed him the TM's note on my phone — we'd emailed the resolution.
He nodded, said "I can see the conversation happened", and issued a verbal warning rather than a fixed penalty. Because there was evidence of resolution in our system, the infringement was categorised differently than it would have been if it was still live and unresolved.
That was the difference between £100 on my licence and a "have a safe run, driver". Not luck. The fact that my operator's infringement workflow was documented.
I covered the TM-side infringement workflow in this post. It works from the other end of the same problem.
What to do if you get a PG9
Right. If you get a PG9 prohibition, you do not drive. Full stop. Officer will hand you the paperwork. It names the defect, the vehicle registration, and the required clearance route — either a DVSA clearance inspection or a repair at an authorised facility depending on the type.
Phone the operator. They send a fitter, a tow, or a replacement vehicle. Your run is dead for that day.
The PG9 is logged against the vehicle's OCRS record and against the operator's licence. The driver themselves doesn't usually carry the PG9 personally — that's the vehicle and operator's issue — unless the defect is something the driver should have caught on the walkaround. A blown marker light is defensible. A flat-tyred trailer you pulled out of the yard that morning isn't, and the officer will ask what was on your walkaround checklist.
What to carry in the cab for this moment
- Current driving licence (photocard)
- Driver CPC qualification card
- Digital tacho card (you always have this — it's plugged in)
- Folder with: insurance cert, MOT, operator licence disc, walkaround book for last 14 days, any CMR/load paperwork for current run
- Phone with a way to pull up emails to your TM — the audit trail
- A calm attitude
Ninety percent of the check is paperwork and data. The last ten percent is how you present. Officers are human. A driver who's cooperative, produces records fast, and doesn't argue gets a kinder read of borderline infringements than a driver who's defensive, slow, or cocky.
The bottom line
The roadside check is not designed to catch you out. It's designed to test whether your operator runs a compliant operation, with you as the visible evidence. If your operator runs proper downloads, handles infringements, and keeps you on legal rotas, your check will be quick and boring.
If your operator is sending you out on impossible loads with 15-minute turnarounds and no training, the check will reveal that in about 10 minutes flat. The PG9 lands on the vehicle. The fixed penalty lands on you. The OCRS damage lands on the operator. Everybody loses.
Skip the backdoor compliance and you're asking for a PG9 sooner or later. Took me three infringements to figure that out.
If you're tired of writing tacho infringements into a notebook and hoping the next roadside check goes quietly, ShiftOwt tracks 561/WTD compliance automatically — £5.99/mo for drivers, agency pricing on request.