At Two Master Classes in 2024

ROADPOL To Teach Spotting

Drive Times Fraud

14 FEB - ROADPOL is to organize two master classes in 2024 aimed at teaching police and road inspection experts to spot truck and bus drive and rest times fraud.

The subject of the master classes will be digital tachograph manipulation. Participants will learn about technical data of the digital tachograph generation 1 and 2, the EU Mobility legislative package and different methods of detecting and proving hardware- and software manipulation of the digital tachograph. The master classes will contain presentations and workshops. The latter target detecting manipulations by analyzing documents and prints, but also by measuring tachograph senders and vehicle units.

Team

The master classess will be taught by Sven Killian from the police of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Frederic Martin of the Belgian Federal Police. They will be joint by experts from Euro Contrôle Route (ECR) - a group of European transport inspection services working together to improve road safety. Killian and Martin have been the permanent trainers and experts on tachograph manipulation for ROADPOL since 2016.

Killian and Martin (right) with ROADPOL Vice President Federica Deledda during a master class in Cremona, Italy in 2022. PHOTO: ROADPOL The master classes will be held 17-21 June and 14-18 October at Hostel H in Hasselt in the Belgian province of Limburg. The classes start Monday evening with a short presentation on ROADPOL, ECR and the class program. The next three days are dedicated to presentations from trainers together with practical workshops. At the end of the master class participants will receive a secured link to download the learning material. The end of the class is marked by a farewell on Thursday.

Attendees

The master classes are open for all police officers with a preference for some basic knowledge in tachographs and driving and resting times. All interested professionals can reach their national ROADPOL point of contact to apply. “Depending on the number of candidates, we try to allocate places in such a way that every country can delegate 1 or 2 participants to the masterclasses”, Frederic Martin explains. “Master classes are a joint effort of ROADPOL and ECR therefore not only police officers but also road inspectors from European road inspections can enroll”, adds Martin. The 16 participants are divided 8 by 8 between police and road inspection units. “For the last 10 years we have already organized around 20 master classes. We strive to update the content with the latest innovations in legislation and manipulations. So far we have received a very positive feedback from participants in recent years praising the high-level content“, says Martin.

Importance

„Driving and resting times and the digital tachograph are very important for road safety. Compliance with these rules ensures safer traffic. Some road users (truck drivers and transport companies) do not take these rules very seriously and tamper with the tachograph, which has a serious impact on road safety and create unfair competition between transport companies. This is why we at ROADPOL are strongly committed to training our people in the field as best as possible in detecting this fraud“, Martin concludes.

The costs for participation in the master MC are covered by the STRIDER III project co-founded by ROADPOL and the European Union*.

*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or [name of the granting authority]. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.