Monitoring working conditions of long-distance drivers

Road transport is one of the most dangerous sectors in terms of health risks to employees. The risk of an accident is high, due to long-distance drivers failing to respect rest periods and succumbing to exhaustion as a result of monotonous driving, too much time spent behind the wheel or lapses in concentration. Since 2004, road transport is regulated by Act No. 121/2004 Coll. on driving hours and rest periods, which covers drivers employed by transport companies, self-employed drivers as well as drivers of vehicles registered abroad who travel within Slovakia on international journeys. Monitoring adherence to this act falls within the responsibility of the National Labour Inspectorate.

In 2005, the National Labour Inspectorate (Národný inspektorát práce, NIP) performed, for the first time, compliance checks on adherence to the social legislation in the transport area according to Act No. 121/2004 Coll. The checks were carried out not only at the workplaces of transport companies but also directly on the roads, in cooperation with the police. Spot checks on roads were performed regardless of the nationality of the drivers of the vehicles and the country of the vehicle registration.

Nature of inspections

Monitoring of compliance with Act No. 121/2004 Coll. at workplaces involved investigation of the following:

• adherence to weekly rest periods and to maximum driving time between those rest periods;

• observance of biweekly limitations of time spent driving the work vehicle;

• provision of compensation for shortening of daily or weekly rest periods;

• proper use of data sheets and data recording equipment for driving hours.

Spot checks of vehicles and drivers on the roads involved:

• adherence to the maximum daily hours for driving a vehicle, observance of safety breaks at work and daily rest periods, and provision of information on the rest periods taken in the last week;

• proper use of data sheets and data registering equipment.

The NIP organises compliance checks which cover at least 1% of working days of professional drivers each year. The annual target of performing 10,500 checks on drivers’ data sheets at workplaces and on roads increased by about 31% in 2005.

Type of offences

During the checks on adherence to the provisions of the act at workplaces and on roads, NIP recorded more than 30,719 violations of the act. Among the most often and most serious offences were the following:

• incorrect use of data sheets and data registering equipment, amounting to 10,243 cases;

• non-adherence to safety breaks – 7,687 cases;

• non-adherence to the required continuous daily rest period – 4,993 cases;

• non-adherence to the maximum permitted daily time spent driving the work vehicle – 3,661 cases.

Most of the violations were recorded during the controls on domestic traffic. Self-employed drivers represented the group of drivers with the highest rate of offences; in many cases, these drivers either did not install the required registering equipment in their vehicles, had such equipment installed but did not use it, or could not prove that the equipment was certified.

Commentary

The outcome of the control checks on adherence to Act No. 121/2004 showed that, a year after the new act regulating working hours and rest periods in the road transport sector came into force, many drivers and transport operators in Slovakia have not been informed about the existence of such a regulation. Therefore, the labour inspectors used the exercise of the checks as an opportunity to educate drivers rather than penalise them. In addition, they offered information and consultancy services free of charge to employers and entrepreneurs, with the aim of creating awareness of the employers’ obligations in relation to the act and to demonstrate the correct use of the data recording equipment directly at the workplaces. It seems that NIP’s consultancy and advisory activities contributed to the positive results in the 2005 transport accident rate in Slovakia. Statistics show that the country registered a decrease in the transport accident rate, despite the fact that the amount of vehicles on Slovakian roads increased.

Viera Škvarková, Institute for Labour and Family Research