Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 sets the driving times, breaks and rest periods for most vehicles over 3.5 tonnes in the EU. This guide translates the legal text into the numbers your planners and drivers actually work with every day.
9 min read · Last reviewed 20 August 2026
Regulation 561/2006 applies to the carriage of goods by vehicles with a maximum permissible mass over 3.5 tonnes (including trailer), and to passenger vehicles built to carry more than nine people including the driver, when driving on public roads in the EU, EEA and Switzerland.
Since the Mobility Package, light commercial vehicles between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes used in international transport or cabotage also fall under the driver-hours and tachograph regime. Many operators who considered themselves 'van fleets' are now in scope, which is the single most common cause of unexpected roadside penalties.
| Limit | Standard | Exception |
|---|---|---|
| Daily driving | 9 hours | 10 hours, twice per week |
| Weekly driving | 56 hours | None — hard ceiling |
| Two-week driving | 90 hours | None — hard ceiling |
| Continuous driving | 4 hours 30 minutes | Then a 45-minute break is required |
| Daily rest | 11 hours | 9 hours, up to three times between weekly rests |
| Weekly rest | 45 hours | 24 hours, if compensated |
The fortnightly ceiling is what catches most planners out. A driver who legally works 56 hours one week may only drive 34 hours the next. Rosters that treat every week as independent will breach the two-week rule roughly once a quarter without anyone noticing until a download is analysed.
After 4 hours 30 minutes of accumulated driving, a driver must take an uninterrupted break of at least 45 minutes, unless a rest period begins instead. The break may be split into two parts: first a block of at least 15 minutes, then a block of at least 30 minutes. The order matters — 30 + 15 is not compliant.
In multi-drop urban work, drivers often accumulate many short pauses that feel like breaks but legally are not. This is why Depot2Door surfaces a live driving counter with a proactive warning five minutes before the limit, rather than an after-the-fact report.
A regular daily rest is 11 consecutive hours, which may also be split into 3 hours followed by 9 hours. A reduced daily rest of at least 9 hours may be used a maximum of three times between two weekly rest periods, and needs no compensation.
Weekly rest is different. A regular weekly rest is at least 45 hours. It can be reduced to a minimum of 24 hours, but the missing hours must be compensated by an equivalent rest taken in one block, attached to another rest period of at least nine hours, before the end of the third week following the week in question.
Enforcement is evidence-based. The tachograph record is the primary source, supported by driver cards, company card downloads and the manual entries a driver makes for periods away from the vehicle. Penalties escalate quickly for missing records, because an unexplained gap is treated as a potential infringement rather than a clerical error.
Software should do three things here: warn before the limit, log the actual event, and produce an audit trail that survives scrutiny months later. Reporting alone is too late; alerting alone leaves nothing to show an inspector.
This guide is written for operational planning and is not legal advice. Rules are applied and enforced differently across member states — always verify against the current legal text and your national authority.
Depot2Door tracks driving time live in the driver app, warns five minutes before the 4h30 limit, schedules breaks into the plan before publishing, and keeps an audit trail per route.
No. The break must be uninterrupted and used only for recuperation, but it can be taken in the cab, in a moving vehicle while another driver drives (in multi-manning), or on a ferry, provided the driver has access to a bunk or couchette where required.
Yes. The two extended daily driving periods are allowed per fixed week, so consecutive weeks can each contain two. The binding constraint is the 56-hour weekly and 90-hour fortnightly ceiling.
A fixed week runs from 00:00 on Monday to 24:00 on the following Sunday. That is different from a rolling seven-day window, which is what most rostering spreadsheets accidentally calculate.
The compensation must be one unbroken block equal to the hours by which the weekly rest was reduced, attached to a rest period of at least nine hours, and completed before the end of the third week after the reduction.
Vans with a maximum permissible mass above 2.5 tonnes used for international carriage of goods or cabotage are covered by the driver-hours and tachograph regime introduced by the Mobility Package. Purely domestic work below 3.5 tonnes normally is not.
Which vehicles need a second-generation smart tachograph, the retrofit deadlines that already passed, what changes for vans over 2.5 tonnes, and how border-crossing records are enforced.
When a driver counts as posted, which operations are exempt, what an IMI posting declaration must contain, and the documents a driver must be able to show at a roadside check.
