Contrary to the 4th paragraph of Article 34.7 of Regulation 165/2014, even if the tachograph is located by satellite, recording the country of departure and arrival remains unavoidable in application of the regulations and the configuration of the devices.
Declare the start and end of service
The formulations Country of departure and Country of arrival mean nothing to the majority of drivers who do not cross any borders. They are even a source of confusion.
By recording the country code, the driver not only indicates where he is, but also when he starts and ends his service. This will make it possible to determine digitally when the working day begins and ends. Social data management software needs this.
“The driver enters into the digital tachograph the symbol of the country where he starts, and that of the country where he ends his daily work period“.
Article 34-7 1st paragraph of Regulation EU 165/2014
On smart Tachograph
On vehicles put into circulation since 2019, "to facilitate verification of compliance with applicable legislation, the position of the vehicle is recorded automatically (...) at the place where the daily working period begins (...), at the place where the daily working period ends".
Article 8 of EU Regulation 165/2014
How could the device record these locations if it doesn’t know the start and end of the day? Certainly, the tachograph could deduce them from the moment when the card is inserted and when it is ejected. But this is already not the case when the driver leaves his card during the rest period. And this is not the case when the driver changes vehicles during the day.
The start and end of the working day can only be recorded upon a voluntary declaration by the driver.
Lead to the offence
"The first driver is not required to enter the country code when the tachograph automatically records location data.”
Article 34-7 4th paragraph of regulation EU 165/2014
Certainly, this European paragraph makes it possible to avoid or contest a serious infringement (GI or Serious Infringements) on the ERRU scale for "Absence in the registration of the symbol of the countries in which the driver's daily working period began and ended".
However, refusal to record the country code may lead to a Very Serious Infringement (VSI) under Article 34-3, "absence of manual entry when it is required".
This is why, even recent devices are designed to require driver to validate the country code (Saisie du code pays: un refus compliqué et risqué - Entering the country code: a complicated and risky refusal).