According to a statement by the Traffic Police Inspectorate in Traunstein (Bavaria region), the 24-year-old Turkish driver of a Polish-registered truck was pulled over for inspection on Saturday on the B20 between Surheim and Freilassing.
The inspectors found that the vehicle’s tacho was not working due to a faulty fuse that had cut the tachograph from the vehicle’s power supply.
After managing to hook the tachograph up and get it restarted, the officers then downloaded data from it.
The inspectors then discovered that the tachograph had been repeatedly disconnected from the power supply late in the evening on almost every working day for the past four weeks. Every morning, the tachograph was reconnected.
During a subsequent search of the driver’s cabin, officers found a working fuse in one of the compartments.The police adds that it looked like the fuse had been taken out and reinserted on multiple occasions.
Due to all of the above, the police concluded that the driver was replacing the fuse with a broken one to get away with breaking drivers’ hours rules.
The broken fuse had been used instead of conventional magnet hack so as to create the impression of a technical fault in the event of a roadside inspection, say officers.
The 24-year-old will driver is facing charges for falsifying his tachograph records. He was allowed out on bail but has had his licence confiscated.
In addition, the driver’s employers face a fine of €15,000.