![]() The run-up to Christmas is always a wearying time for the UK’s lorry drivers, but 2021 was exceptionally busy. In it, a lorry half-hangs from a motorway bridge. Piper was sent a particularly graphic one recently. Lorry drivers swap photos of bad accidents like trading cards. Long-distance lorry driving has a narcoleptic effect, especially after lunch. ![]() ![]() “You’re driving a killing machine,” says Piper. (In normal circumstances, drivers can work for only 56 hours a week, but the government has extended this temporarily due to a shortage of drivers.) The data goes to his employer, the haulage firm Youngs, which has to produce it on request to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the government body that checks compliance. He can work a maximum of 60 hours a week. Piper may drive for a maximum of nine hours a day and he must take a 45-minute break after four and a half hours. It records all the lorry’s data: speed, distance travelled, breaks taken, total driving hours. Lorry drivers used to do 16- or 18-hour shifts, but now they are monitored by a digital tachograph card Piper inserts his into a slot above the dashboard. After mind-numbing loops of concrete motorway, Piper finishes driving mid-afternoon.
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