Overspeeding – How serious is it?

01 July 2024

Many of you will receive tachograph infringement reports, which identify overspeeding as an issue for particular drivers, from the analysis software that you are using.

It is important to understand what overspeeding means within the content of the Regulations.

What is overspeeding?

Overspeeding is defined as meaning exceeding the authorised speed of the vehicle, i.e. the speed limiter level, for more than 60 seconds.

This is not as straightforward as it sounds. The ‘overspeed’ report will only pick up speed in excess of the speed limiter for the relevant vehicle limit, not the speed limit on the road. In practice this means that a driver driving on a motorway in an HGV where lawfully he can drive up to 60 mph, will in fact not be doing anything wrong if he is going downhill and the vehicle exceeds the speed limited 90km an hour (56 mph). On the face of it, you have to be careful when looking at overspeed events to try and understand what is happening.

What does the vehicle unit record?

The vehicle unit is not designed or required by law to record all overspeeding events and this therefore gives a misrepresentation to an operator when running reports that may be produced from analysis software.

Certain overspeeding events will not be recorded. For example, drivers who exceed the speed limiter level, but return to that speed level in 60 seconds or less will not be recorded.  Furthermore, many overspeeding events will be overwritten by the vehicle unit, when either, the next event or another event is considered to be more serious or, where the number of events means that the oldest event is erased from the memory.

The vehicle unit is required, by law, to store the following overspeed events:

• The first event having occurred after the last calibration.
• The five most serious events which have occurred over the last 365 days.
• The most serious event for each of the 10 last days of occurrence.

Therefore, a vehicle unit will only store 16 overspeed events.

Examples

Scenario 1

A vehicle unit is downloaded on the first day of April for the previous month. The vehicle has been used every day and there was at least one overspeed event on each day.

Only the last 10 days’ most serious events will be stored on the vehicle unit and the previous overspeed events will be overwritten.

Therefore, in a 31-day period, in this example, 21 days of overspeed events have been overwritten.  Furthermore, it is only the most serious event for each of the last 10 days that is stored.

Scenario 2

If there has been more than one overspeed event on a single day, then only the most serious is stored on the vehicle unit and this is calculated as the one with the highest average speed.

Therefore, if there have been two drivers in the vehicle, Driver A and Driver B,

Driver A has an overspeed event with a maximum speed of 109 km/h and an average speed of 106 km/h, this data would then be compared with the overspeed event of Driver B.

If Driver B has a maximum speed of 120 km/h but an average speed of 105 km/h, then Driver A’s data will be stored (as it is the one with the highest average speed) and Driver B’s event would not be stored and therefore not reported on the vehicle unit data.

How should I use this information?

From your point of view as an operator or Transport Manager, it is important therefore that the overspeed report is viewed as a screening device and to identify, initially, the most serious reported overspeed events. By addressing those, this should result in those other drivers (who are currently not being reported) being reported in the future.

What should you do?

The driver will need to be spoken to and dealt with on any overspeed infringement, unless it can be established that the over speeding has occurred on a motorway and is legitimate.

Do not ignore extended periods of overspeed, if the speed limiter is, on the face of it, not working correctly.  That may be apparent by the length of time the over speeding is recorded. Defective speed limiters are a serious issue and  need taking up with the driver concerned and/or the maintenance facility, since the speed limiter is legally required to be calibrated and fixed to work at the correct speed.

The alternative and most common scenario is that the speed limiter is operating correctly but nonetheless, there are a number of overspeed events flagging up the various drivers.

In this scenario, it’s important to work out where the driver is at the point when the overspeed occurs. Clearly if the driver is on an A road (whether in England, Wales or Scotland) and not on the motorway, then speed limiter overspeeding also represents speeding in terms of breaching the national speed limit from the class of vehicle they are driving. Where that is the case, the driver is likely to face sanction if that were to come to the attention of the Traffic Commissioner under their driver conduct powers. It is one of the standard undertakings on a goods vehicle operator’s licence that you will have arrangements to ensure that speed limits are adhered to. On that basis, it is important that where you see overspeed events and you are able to identify (either with tracking or you may know by the nature of the journey) ) where the vehicle was ( and whether it was on a motorway or not, that you follow that up with the driver specifically.

Can I use this to identify driver performance generally?

Overspeeding analysis is a bit of a numb way of actually assessing driver performance as regards speed limits. It only picks up issues that are over 60 seconds in length and furthermore, does not itself identify the location and does not necessarily identify the worst offenders as detailed above.

Historically, operators were expected to have arrangements for managing speeding, but there was not much guidance as to what that looked like.  It was rather difficult to manage drivers speeding when they are on the road, unless for example an overspeed event occurred, and you could identify that it was not on a motorway. However, today with GPS and telematic technology and other safe driver monitoring systems, it is much easier to identify driver misconduct amongst your team and you are expected as an operator to be engaging with appropriate systems and processes to manage this risk.

Lead by example

As a final point on the question of speeding generally, a particularly unattractive situation is one that involves either a director of the company or Transport Manager of the business being involved in the overspeed or speeding allegations!

It is very important for directors and Transport Managers to lead by example from the Traffic Commissioner’s point of view.

Conclusion

An overspeed report is a management tool which should be used to identify the most serious breaches as reported on the vehicle unit, it is not all the overspeed events that have occurred in the vehicle.

Focusing on overspeed events alone is too lacking in detail to be the main way of trying to manage individual driver performance on an ongoing basis.  It cannot however, be ignored and it is something that you nonetheless need to be able to demonstrate that you have dealt with properly if you are called to respond to tachograph recorded overspeed events by the DVSA or OTC.

Please contact the regulatory team at Backhouse Jones on 01254 828 300 if you would like any further information on this matter.  This article was written by James Backhouse and Jo Dawson-Gerrard from Backhouse Jones and Gordon Humphreys from Foster Tachographs.