I did the EU/UK hours a few years ago to do the Transport Manager CPC. But here they use the EU rules but also sometimes the French rules636mick wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2024 1:29 pmLove your posts about becoming a bus driver.Noggin wrote: ↑Sun Sep 01, 2024 12:43 pm Spent a few hours this morning sat at a different cafe this morning studying drivers hours (cos that's what I failed most on in the test last week! I get the daily driver hours, it's weekly, double-drivers, 5 weeks of hours etc that melts my brain)
Thought I'd got a grip on it on to find the next section was on French working hours - that are different FFS
So it seems I have to remember two sets of regs - I had enough trouble mastering one set
Makes me laugh cos I used to be a driver/mechanic for a UK coach company and spent most of my time driving abroad. French rules passed me by totally, we all just drove! Probably a few rules we broke weekly.
We used to run into Beziers, do a driver swap and we got 12 hours off, which I’m sure wasn’t enough even with 2 drivers. Then we would sit in the town square, eat, drink, then drink, then sleep, then eat, then go back to work driving back to the UK. The local Police got wise and started breathalysing every coach just as we got back on the peage.
Back at Calais we swapped passengers and if we were going home we normally jumped in a car, otherwise we turned round and did it all again, sometimes 4 or 5 times in a row!!
So when I read about your confusion about hours I understand what you’re going through, stick with it, it’s nearly over and you can become a chauffeur d’autobus!!
Mick
I got a question wrong today about the 2 driver thing - Im certain sure that under EU rules you can't, as first driver, sit next to the second driver for an 1.5 hours and then start driving again. That's not a pause/rest, its waiting/disponible/carré-barré. But I remember there being some differences for the French working hours - so guessing they say you can, cos I got the question wrong!! Need to work it all out very soon tho!!
Got another test tomorrow - both on the written questions and also one of the oral ones. I massively failed the written one last week, but have finally sorted out a very important bit of paper today so feel a bit more relaxed/less stressed so I might actually remember more!! The oral stuff - pretty sure I'm gonna fail
But I have 4 weeks to keep practicing!
Roll on 8th November when hopefully I'll be a coach driver! (sorry, Conductrice d'Autocar!). And my boss had sold loads of interseason trips around europe the last few months and is expecting to be equally or more busy in the interseason next year. So I REALLY do need to pass!!