My card was in the pocket of a jacket I hadn't worn since Friday. Found this out at 05:45 on a Wednesday morning in the yard at Stafford, key in hand, delivery booked for 08:00 at a supermarket RDC outside Coventry. Driver before me hadn't left me much margin.
The thing is, there's a legal procedure for exactly this situation. It doesn't remove the inconvenience. It doesn't make the DVSA roadside check conversation any shorter. But it's what keeps you legal — and if you follow it correctly, you can continue operating without your card for up to 15 calendar days.
What trips people up is not knowing the procedure exists, not doing it properly, or not applying for the replacement card fast enough.
The regulation that covers it
This comes from Article 29 of Regulation (EU) No 165/2014 — the tachograph equipment regulation that remains in force in the UK as assimilated law post-Brexit. Article 29 specifically covers lost, stolen, and damaged cards. Article 35 of the same regulation sets out what the printout procedure involves while you're driving without the card.
A note on this, because I've seen it cited wrong a few times: Article 35 doesn't give you permission to drive without your card for 15 days. That's Article 29. Article 35 is the procedural detail for how you manage the journey logs in the meantime.
The 15-day rule
Under Article 29, a driver whose card is lost, stolen, damaged, or malfunctioning may continue driving for a maximum of 15 calendar days from the date of the loss, theft, damage, or malfunction. The extension beyond 15 days is only permitted if the vehicle needs to return to its home operating centre — you can't just treat it as an ongoing licence to drive indefinitely without a card.
Fifteen calendar days isn't a work-around for forgetting to order a replacement. It's an emergency provision. The expectation is that you're applying for a replacement card immediately — within seven calendar days of the loss — and operating without it only because the replacement hasn't arrived yet.
What to do before you start driving
At the start of every shift while you're operating without a card, you need to print a sheet from the vehicle unit — the VU — that shows the vehicle details. This is your start-of-day printout.
On that printout, you write:
- Your full name
- Your driver card number (if lost or stolen) or your driving licence number as a fallback
- Your signature
- The periods you're recording manually: any other work, availability, and rest periods already completed before you printed this sheet, that aren't already captured by the VU
This printout shows that you were present, legal, and complying with the procedure before starting. Don't fold it in your pocket and forget about it. Keep it with you in the cab for the shift.
What to do at the end of the shift
At the end of each day's driving — or when you swap vehicles, which means you do this for each vehicle — produce a second VU printout. This end-of-shift printout covers everything recorded by the tachograph during the drive, plus any periods of other work, availability, or rest that happened but weren't automatically captured.
Same annotations: name, card number or licence number, date, signature. Both the start and end printouts go with you. DVSA will want to see them at a roadside check; your operator should retain copies for their records, just as they'd retain driver card data for any other driver.
The 7-day reporting rule
Article 29 says you must formally report the loss or theft to the Secretary of State — in practice, DVLA — and apply for a replacement card within seven calendar days. Not seven working days. Seven calendar days.
This is the bit most drivers underestimate. You call it in on a Thursday, DVLA confirms receipt, the seven-day clock runs. Once you've applied, DVLA should issue a replacement within eight working days of receiving a complete application. So in theory, from loss to new card in hand is around three weeks. In practice, applications sometimes take longer.
Apply online through the DVLA driver card service. You'll need your driving licence number. If your card was stolen, you'll also need to report the theft to police — Article 29 specifically requires a formal declaration of theft to the relevant authority, which in the UK means the police. Get a crime reference number; you may need it if DVSA asks questions during the 15-day period.
The DVLA contact number for driver cards in England, Scotland and Wales is 0300 790 6109. Northern Ireland drivers use DVA on 0300 200 7861.
Damaged or malfunctioning cards
If your card is damaged — physically cracked, demagnetised, won't read properly in the slot — the same procedure applies. The difference is that you're expected to return the damaged card to DVLA along with your replacement application. Don't just put the damaged card in a drawer. The regulation requires it to be surrendered.
A malfunctioning card is one that won't operate correctly in the tachograph head even though it looks undamaged. Smart tachographs can reject a card for data integrity reasons — if yours is consistently refusing to read and it's not an equipment fault with the VU, it may have failed. Try it in another vehicle's tachograph if you can. If it fails there too, treat it as a malfunction and apply for a replacement.
What DVSA expect at a roadside check
If you get pulled during the 15-day window, the check will include the officer asking to see your driver card. You'll show them the printouts instead. Both the morning and end-of-day printouts for previous shifts should be in the cab — the general rule is the same 28-day document requirement that applies to manual records when the card isn't in use.
Show them clearly annotated printouts and a coherent explanation of the situation. If you reported the theft to police, have the crime reference number available. DVSA examiners are used to this procedure — it's unusual but not uncommon, and a driver who knows the rules and is following them correctly doesn't cause the same concern as one who has no card and no explanation.
What causes problems at roadside is drivers who've lost their card, don't know the procedure, and have been driving on the VU alone without the printout annotations. The VU records the activity. But the record of why there's no card in slot 1, and the driver's manual record of rest periods, isn't in the system. That's the failure the examiner will note.
The forgotten card situation
Slightly different case: card exists, you know where it is, you've just left it at home. The Article 29 procedure technically applies here too — the card is unavailable to you whether or not it physically exists. But DVSA guidance takes a less sympathetic view of the forgotten card compared to loss or theft. Ideally you'd go and collect it rather than invoke the 15-day emergency procedure for a card that's in your kitchen drawer. If collection isn't possible on the day, document what you're doing and why, apply to DVLA if the card will genuinely be unavailable for an extended period, and don't treat it as a workaround for poor card management.
I wrote separately about [the driver card not being in the vehicle](/blog/driver-card-not-in-vehicle-printout-manual-entry) with more detail on that scenario.
For the operator
If a driver tells you their card is lost or stolen, your job is to make sure they know the procedure and are following it. Keep copies of the annotated printouts in the driver file. Make a note in your records of when the card was reported lost and when the DVLA application was submitted. This is the documentation that shows, if asked, that you knew about the situation and managed it correctly.
A driver operating without their card and without the printout procedure is a compliance failure that sits with the operator as well as the driver. It's worth five minutes at the start of induction and again if the situation arises. Most drivers don't know the Article 29 procedure until they need it.
If you're tracking driver card status alongside availability and compliance across a fleet, ShiftOwt lets you flag drivers with card issues without building a separate spreadsheet for it — £5.99/month for individual drivers, fleet pricing on request.