Driving and rest time rules for drivers, with worked examples

Driving and rest time rules are everyday business for every dispatcher and driver, and yet they are the most common reason for fines at inspections. Not because they are complicated, but because they are remembered roughly: "four and a half hours then a break, nine hours a day", and the fine comes from a detail: a break split in the wrong order, a third reduced rest in a week, or compensation that arrived too late. Here are all the rules in one place, followed by five situations from practice, with the hours.

Where the rules come from: Regulation 561/2006, AETR and domestic law

In the European Union, driving and rest time is governed by Regulation (EC) 561/2006. Serbia is not an EU member but is a signatory of the AETR agreement, which sets the same limits for international transport, and the domestic Law on Working Time of Vehicle Crews in Road Transport and Tachographs applies those rules in domestic transport as well. So a driver from Serbia answers the same questions at an inspection in Hungary, Germany or at home: how long he drove, when he took a break and how long he rested.

The rules apply to drivers of goods vehicles with a maximum permissible mass over 3.5 tonnes and of buses with more than nine seats, in other words all vehicles that must have a tachograph. The tachograph is also the only proof that the rules were followed, so everything below is checked from its records.

The four activities a tachograph records

Before the rules, the four statuses, because half of all offences come down to the wrong status:

• Driving: time at the wheel, recorded automatically as soon as the vehicle moves.
• Other work: loading, unloading, washing the vehicle, paperwork, waiting during which the driver does something.
• Availability: waiting whose duration the driver knows in advance and during which he does not have to stay with the vehicle, for example waiting on a ferry or sitting in the passenger seat in a two-driver crew.
• Break and rest: time the driver can freely dispose of. Only this counts towards the 45-minute break and the daily and weekly rest.

A driver who leaves the tachograph on rest during loading is not stealing time, but at an inspection it looks as if he rested while working, and the next break is counted from the wrong moment. Switching the status is the habit that pays off fastest.

Break: 45 minutes after 4.5 hours of driving

After at most 4.5 hours of driving, continuous or accumulated over several shorter stretches, the driver must take a break of at least 45 minutes, unless a daily or weekly rest starts instead. The break may be split into two parts, but only in this order: first at least 15 minutes, then at least 30 minutes. After the break is complete, a new 4.5 hours begins.

During the break the driver may neither drive nor do other work. If he unloads goods during the "break", that is other work, and the 4.5 hours keep running.

Daily driving time: 9 hours, twice a week 10

Daily driving time is the total time at the wheel between two daily rests, or between a daily and a weekly rest. It is limited to 9 hours, and at most twice a week it may be extended to 10 hours. There is no third time in the same week, however short the remaining distance.

Weekly and fortnightly driving time: 56 and 90 hours

A week runs from Monday 00:00 to Sunday 24:00. In one week a driver may drive at most 56 hours, and in any two consecutive weeks at most 90. The second limit is the one most often forgotten: after a week with 56 hours of driving, at most 34 remain for the next.

Daily rest: 11 hours, reduced 9

Within each 24-hour period after the end of the previous daily or weekly rest, the driver must complete a new daily rest. A regular daily rest lasts at least 11 hours and may be split into two parts, the first of at least 3 hours and the second of at least 9, which makes 12 in total. A reduced daily rest lasts at least 9 hours and is allowed at most three times between two weekly rests, with no compensation required.

The practical consequence of the 24-hour rule: a driver who started work at 6:00 must complete 11 hours of rest by 6:00 the next day, so he must stop by 19:00 at the latest, regardless of how many hours he drove.

Weekly rest: 45 hours, reduced 24 with compensation

The weekly rest must start no later than at the end of six 24-hour periods from the end of the previous weekly rest. A regular one lasts at least 45 hours, a reduced one at least 24. In any two consecutive weeks the driver must take either two regular weekly rests, or one regular and one reduced. The hours missing up to 45 are compensated en bloc, by the end of the third week following the week in which the rest was reduced, attached to another rest of at least 9 hours.

In the European Union, since 2020 the Mobility Package amendment also applies: the regular 45-hour weekly rest may not be taken in the cab, but in suitable accommodation paid for by the employer. AETR does not contain that provision, but inspections in the EU rely on it, so count on it for international runs.

Two-driver crews, ferries and trains

When two drivers share the vehicle, each of them must take a new daily rest of at least 9 hours within 30 hours of the end of the previous daily rest. The driver in the passenger seat while the colleague drives may take the 45-minute break, but not a daily rest: there is no such thing as rest in a moving vehicle.

When a driver accompanies a vehicle on a ferry or train and has access to a bunk, a regular daily rest may be interrupted at most twice, for up to one hour in total, for example for boarding and disembarking. The rest is then not cancelled, it continues.

Five examples from practice

1. A classic day with two stretches

Departure at 6:00, driving until 10:30 (4.5 hours), break until 11:15, driving until 15:45 (another 4.5 hours, 9 in total). Then unloading as other work until 17:00 and a daily rest of 11 hours, until 4:00. Everything is within the rules: the 24-hour period that began at 6:00 ends at 6:00, and the rest is completed at 4:00.

2. A split break in the wrong order

After 2 hours of driving the driver takes a 30-minute break, then after another 2 hours a 15-minute break, convinced he has "done his 45". He has not: the split only counts as 15 then 30. His second break of 15 minutes does not close the break, the 4.5 hours are still counted from the morning, and the next half-hour stretch is an offence. The correct order is the reverse: first 15, then 30.

3. A third ten-hour day

Monday 10 hours, Tuesday 9, Wednesday 9, Thursday 10, Friday another 45 kilometres to base, and the driver is already at 9 hours. The tenth hour is not allowed: the two extensions for that week were used on Monday and Thursday. What remains is a daily rest in the parking area and base tomorrow morning. A dispatcher who sees the remaining driving time in the system knows this on Wednesday and plans differently.

4. A fourth reduced daily rest

Between two weekly rests the driver took a reduced rest of 9 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday he must take 11, even though 9 hours would be enough to reach the loading point. The three reduced rests are used up; the next reduced one is possible only after a weekly rest.

5. A reduced weekly rest and its compensation

In the first week the driver took a regular rest of 45 hours. In the second week, because of a run, he rests only 24 hours, so 21 hours are missing. Those 21 hours must be compensated en bloc by the end of the fifth week at the latest, by adding them to a rest of at least 9 hours: for example, a daily rest of 11 hours is extended to 32, or the next weekly rest from 45 to 66 hours. Compensation "in instalments" of a few hours does not exist.

What is fined most often at inspections

• Exceeding 4.5 hours of driving by 10 to 20 minutes, "just to the fuel station".
• Rest status during loading or unloading, so a break that in reality was not a break.
• A split break in the wrong order, as in example 2.
• A fourth reduced daily rest or a third extension to 10 hours in the same week.
• A reduced weekly rest without compensation in time.
• Driving without a driver card or with someone else's card, which is a separate category of offence.

At a roadside inspection the inspector looks at the current day and the previous 28 days, and in the EU since 2025 up to 56 days, so an offence from three weeks ago counts the same as today's at an inspection on the Austrian border.

How the rules are followed without a spreadsheet and a calculator

The tachograph already calculates these rules, it just shows them to the driver in the cab. A system that reads the tachograph remotely shows the same data to the dispatcher: how long the driver has driven, how much longer he may, when his daily and weekly rest is due, and an alarm arrives before a limit is crossed. Offences are extracted from the downloaded data automatically, so they are discovered on Friday in the office rather than at an inspection. How that looks is described on the tachograph page, and the download deadlines in the 28 and 90 day deadlines.

Frequently asked questions