Sunday Driving Ban, COVID-19 and Driving Times – Or: Why One Must First Sort the Terms in Some Discussions
There are discussions about truck traffic where one eventually feels that for some people, all regulations surrounding the profession of a professional driver can be reduced to a single major law.
Sunday driving ban? Driving time limits.
Weekend rest period? Sunday driving ban.
Rest areas and sanitary facilities at rest stops? COVID-19.
And if somewhere an exception applies, sooner or later someone will explain what the government did wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At this point, it is worth taking a step back.
Because much of what is claimed in such discussions has indeed a real starting point. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we professional drivers faced significant problems. There were temporary exceptions to driving and rest time limits. The Sunday and weekend driving ban was temporarily relaxed or suspended. Rest areas and sanitary facilities were partially only accessible under restricted conditions, and at times not even accessible again. We had to work under conditions that should never be romanticized today.
All of this is true.
But COVID-19 has now grown quite a beard.
Yes, the pandemic was a terrible time for many professional drivers. Yes, there were situations where we were treated unfairly. Closed sanitary facilities, lack of means of supply, and sometimes questionable conditions on the road were not mere fantasies.
But eventually one must also begin to distinguish between what is actually a state regulation or exception, and what companies have done in extraordinary circumstances.
If an employer treats drivers poorly, schedules working hours incorrectly, or tries to circumvent legal limits, this is not automatically a failure of the Federal Government. The Federal Government does not have a glass sphere that controls every company and alerts them immediately upon violations.
And if someone today criticizes a completely different regulation, it will not become more correct just by retrieving the pandemic from the drawer again.
“COVID-19 was shit. That is undeniable. But COVID-19 cannot be used as a universal argument for all discussions about professional truck drivers.”
Just as little as comparisons with France have been made for years. Other countries, other… customs… 😂
Sometime an old story becomes the standard argument, which is then applied to every new problem, even though the concrete connection has long disappeared.
Exactly what happens in the current discussion about the Sunday driving ban.
And that is why it is worth first separating the various things apart.
The Sunday Driving Ban Has Nothing to Do with Driving Time at First
Let us begin with perhaps the most important distinction.
The German Sunday driving ban is regulated in § 30, Paragraph 3 of the Road Traffic Ordinance. According to this provision, trucks with a permissible total mass exceeding 7.5 tonnes and trailers following trucks may not be used for business or paid transport of goods on Sundays and public holidays between 00:00 and 22:00. The provision also contains a whole series of exceptions.
This is a driving ban.
The driving time limits, on the other hand, result from European driver personnel law, in particular from Regulation (EC) No 561/2006.
This is a social rule for drivers.
Both pursue different purposes and function independently of each other.
A driver may, for example, have several hours of driving time available at the same time and still be subject to the Sunday driving ban. His driving time is not thereby exhausted; he may simply not drive with this vehicle or in this type of transport at that time.
Conversely, a transport may fall under an exception from the Sunday driving ban. Then the truck may drive. The driver must, however, of course still observe his driving and rest time limits.
This sounds simple.
It is indeed simple.
Despite this, these two things are surprisingly often mixed together in discussions.
What Was Actually Different During COVID-19?
Yes, during the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations for driver personnel were partially relaxed.
This should not be downplayed.
The background was the maintenance of supply. Foodstuffs, medicines, medical equipment and numerous other goods had to continue to be transported. At the same time, there were massive restrictions on public life and sometimes significant problems along the transport chain.
Germany therefore temporarily used the possibilities provided by European law for exceptions and issued additional national regulations. Among others, temporary easing of driving and rest time limits was allowed for certain transports.
Who says that there were relaxations in driving and rest time limits during COVID-19 is thus not fundamentally wrong.
It will be wrong only when this leads to a permanent or blanket abolition of social rules.
The COVID-19 exceptions were exactly those: temporary exceptions for extraordinary situations. They were time-limited and conditional on certain prerequisites. The normal European regulations were not abolished by means of the corresponding exception. After the end of the relevant exception, the normal provisions again applied.
And that should have been enough to deal with the topic.
For not every problem that arose during COVID-19 can still be explained today by COVID-19.
Above all one must distinguish between who was actually responsible for a problem.
If a company treated its drivers poorly at that time, if sanitary facilities were closed down, or if an employer attempted to extract as much as possible from the exceptional situation, then this is not automatically a decision of the German federal government.
Of course, one can and must criticize state measures when they were wrong.
But just as one should not discharge companies solely from their own responsibility by subsequently shifting everything onto “the policy during the Corona pandemic.”
This applies today just as it did then.
And what does this have to do with the mobility package?
Here, it becomes interesting regarding the issue of weekly rest periods.
Especially often in such discussions, the possibility of inserting two consecutive weeks of reduced rest periods is linked to the Corona exceptions.
And here too, a careful analysis is worthwhile.
For this reason, this option is not a permanent exception under the Corona framework.
It was incorporated into the European driver’s rights through Mobility Package I. Regulation (EU) 2020/1054 amended Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 and introduced, under certain conditions, the possibility for a driver to take two consecutive weeks of reduced rest periods in cross-border goods transport outside the member state where the vehicle is based.
This is not simply the statement: “A driver may take two weeks less rest time consecutively.”
The provision does not work this way.
The regulation is conditional. Within four consecutive weeks, a total of at least four weeks of rest must be taken, with at least two regular weeks of rest. Furthermore, the reductions must be fully offset. If two weeks of reduced rest are taken consecutively, the corresponding offset must be taken immediately before the following regular week of rest.
This is not the abolition of rest time.
It is a flexibilization of the conditions for weekly rest time with corresponding offset obligations.
And foremost, it is a provision of the Mobility Package and not simply an extended Corona exception.
The fact that both things coincide in time does not make them one and the same thing.
Why this distinction is particularly important now
The real problem becomes apparent again in the current discussion.
I find it increasingly interesting how many groups jump on the same train, some of which are currently pushing forward regarding the rule on Sunday driving bans.
Especially with the current exception rules for transports that must be rerouted onto roads due to low water levels, there is a partial impression that few people who blow into the same horn have actually understood what this regulation really means.
All that matters is that one can blame the Federal Ministry of Transport and the entire policy on their inability.
Especially surprising is that organizations and groups that are in fact representing the interests of employees and professional drivers also blow into the same horn as those who represent, above all, the interests of companies.
Because this topic must be explained again and again.
The lifting of the Sunday driving ban does not mean that suddenly every driver would be obliged to undertake additional trips on Sundays.
No one will be forced to drive transports that must be rerouted onto roads due to low water levels.
No one demands that drivers be exploited for this reason.
No one has claimed that these transports have priority over all other transports.
And no one claims that, therefore, the driving and rest periods have been abolished.
They are not.
Exactly for this reason was the Sunday driving ban lifted in this context: so that such transports can be carried out if corresponding capacities are available.
This is a possibility – not an obligation.
A company that does not have the corresponding capacities must not undertake these transports. And a company that undertakes them must, of course, still deploy its drivers in accordance with the applicable working time, driving and rest period regulations.
No one gets suddenly a free pass to drive longer or to let themselves rest less because of the lifting of the Sunday driving ban.
And precisely here lies for me the problem with many of these contributions.
The lifting of the ban is sometimes presented as if this would automatically create an obligation to send drivers on Sundays onto the roads and to use them to the maximum extent possible.
This is simply false.
One can certainly debate whether the Sunday driving ban in general is sensible.
One can debate whether drivers are adequately paid for Sunday work.
One can discuss working conditions, parking spaces, sanitary facilities, and the compatibility of the profession with family life.
And, of course, one can criticize the policy.
But then, please base your arguments on what was actually decided – and not on what you would like to make out of it.
Because if even organizations that are in fact representing workers’ rights start mixing these things together, one should not be surprised when comments subsequently arise with the next wave of “The politicians want to force the lorry drivers through the countryside for seven days a week”-stories.
And precisely this is false.
A lifting of the Sunday driving ban is first and foremost a legal possibility to carry out a transport.
It is not an instruction to companies to deploy their drivers additionally.
She is not merely a change in social regulations.
Anyone who wishes to criticize this specific exception should be free to do so. However, such criticism must also focus on the actual political decision at stake: whether such an exception is indeed necessary and appropriate for the particular situation.
Not regarding an alleged lifting of driving and rest periods, which never actually occurred.
Do we really need every Sunday traffic?
For me, this is by far the more interesting question.
If today’s discussion concerns loosening or abolishing the ban on Sunday commercial vehicle travel, one should not merely ask whether a truck could theoretically drive. One should ask why it must be driven.
There are transports where a time-critical delivery can indeed be justified as necessary or beneficial. That is why there are statutory exceptions to the Sunday driving ban.
But there are also transports that simply need to operate on Sundays because logistics require them to be organized as cheaply, quickly, and flexibly as possible.
And here, one could certainly shift perspective.
If a company plans its supply chain so that a truck must drive on Sunday so that goods are ready by Monday morning, then this is initially an entrepreneurial and logistical decision.
The question of whether to lift the statutory Sunday driving ban for such a purpose constitutes a political decision.
And the question of whether the driver receives an appropriate premium and how this working time fits into their private life is, in turn, a labor and tariff policy issue.
These are different levels of analysis.
And precisely for that reason, one should not constantly mix them together.
And then come the sanitary facilities into play
Here too, it becomes clear how quickly different issues get conflated.
Of course, conditions during the pandemic were far from acceptable at times.
Anyone who was traveling then would know that closed rest areas, restricted access to toilets and showers, or generally inadequate infrastructure for drivers represented a serious problem.
This can be criticized—and indeed, it should be critically examined.
But even here: A problem with sanitary facilities is not a change in driving and rest regulations.
If a driver must take their prescribed break or rest period and encounters difficulties in reaching a reasonable toilet, that is an infrastructure issue.
The solution cannot be to simply set the social regulations aside.
On the contrary.
European regulations now contain very specific requirements regarding certain rest periods. Regular weekly rest periods and specific compensatory rest periods may not be spent in the vehicle; they must instead take place in a suitable accommodation with adequate sleeping and sanitary facilities.
This clearly shows in which direction law should proceed:
Not less rest for the driver, but reasonable conditions under which this rest can actually be enjoyed.
“No one forces you to drive.”
This phrase also appears regularly in discussions about the Sunday driving ban.
And yes, of course, no one compels a person with a loaded gun to become a professional truck driver.
But that is not what we are discussing here.
An employed professional truck driver ultimately decides on their own whether to accept certain orders for the next morning’s work. They operate within an employment relationship, a job plan, and a system of economic organization.
Therefore, the real question should be phrased differently:
If society requires transport services on Sundays, under what conditions should this work take place?
This is a completely legitimate discussion.
One can then discuss premiums, working hours, family life, job planning, parking availability, and the general appreciation of the profession.
But that does not automatically mean that every Sunday transport is necessary.
What does all this have to do with valuing professional truck drivers?
A great deal.
Because I hold it fully justified for drivers to say:
“We worked during the pandemic while many others stayed home. We ensured that supply works, and we expect more than a wet handshake in return.”
That can be defended.
I would even argue: This should be seriously discussed.
But for that, one does not need mixed legal history.
One can acknowledge what drivers have accomplished during the pandemic, without claiming that driving and rest regulations were abolished.
One can demand better pay for Sunday and holiday work, without using the Corona exceptions to social regulations as justification.
One can demand better rest facilities and sanitary conditions, without thereby sparking a debate about daily driving hours.
And one can discuss the Sunday driving ban without making general criticisms of the entire professional truck driver rights framework.
Above all, one should eventually stop explaining current problems with old histories.
Corona was an exceptional situation.
The experiences from that time must not be forgotten. But they cannot serve as a permanent universal justification for everything that does not work in road freight transport today.
If a company today employs its drivers poorly, one must speak about the company.
If a statutory regulation is implemented poorly, one must speak to the legislator.
If a trade union raises a political demand, one must evaluate that demand.
And if an exception rule is misrepresented, one should correct it accurately.
Responsibility should be named where it actually lies.
What has actually happened?
When separating the various elements clearly, the story is not so difficult.
During the pandemic, certain regulations were temporarily suspended to maintain supply despite the extraordinary situation.
There were also temporary relaxations of the ban on driving on Sundays and public holidays.
These special rules subsequently expired again.
At the same time, in 2020, Mobility Package I was adopted. This brought permanent changes to European driver rights, including the possibility for drivers to take two consecutive reduced rest periods under certain conditions in cross-border goods transport. However, this regulation is accompanied by clear conditions and full compensation.
And today, again, individual exceptions from the Sunday driving ban can be decided for specific extraordinary situations without affecting steering or rest times.
This is Corona.
The other is European traffic policy.
And yet another thing: a specific exception from the Sunday driving ban.
Three different things.
Not a single large “LGV law.”
And what about fines abroad?
Here too, one should be cautious.
It is true that various European states during the pandemic had different exceptions and different validity periods.
This could lead to significant problems for drivers in international traffic.
An exception that applied in Germany did not automatically mean that another member state would apply the same exception in the same period.
This can become relevant during a control.
However, one should not make a general story from individual experiences.
To evaluate a specific case, one needs at least the country concerned, the time of occurrence, the specific exception, and the specific violation.
Only then can one determine what actually happened.
Perhaps we should therefore simply start talking again about what we are actually discussing
The Sunday driving ban could be abolished.
One could choose to keep it.
One could want to relax it for certain transports.
One could demand better pay for work on Sundays and public holidays.
One could get angry about the lack of parking spaces.
One could demand better sanitary facilities.
One could criticize how drivers were treated during Corona.
And one could very rightly speak about the need for reasonable working conditions in a profession that relies heavily on large parts of society.
Everything is perfectly legitimate.
However, what does not help is to build a single story from all these topics.
For then exactly what we observe repeatedly on social networks happens:
Someone remembers a Corona exception.
Someone else talks about the two reduced rest periods.
The next one comes with the Sunday driving ban.
Then suddenly it’s about toilets at rest areas.
And five comments later, everyone discusses fines, taxes, and driver shortages.
Unfortunately, no longer does anyone speak about the same topic.
Conclusion
Perhaps therefore the most important rule for every discussion on driver rights is simply:
First sort out the terms. Then discuss.
The Sunday driving ban is not the steering time.
The steering time is not the working time.
The working time is not the rest time.
A reduced rest period is not an abolished rest period.
The Corona exceptions are not the Mobility Package.
And the Mobility Package is not the Sunday driving ban.
But equally important is another distinction:
Not every problem of a driver is automatically a problem caused by politics.
One can argue about all these things.
One can evaluate them politically differently.
One can make demands to employers, politicians, and society.
But if we are already talking about the profession of the driver and its working conditions, we should at least clearly distinguish which regulation is actually meant – and who is actually responsible for the respective problem.
For driver rights:
A false attribution does not make an assertion correct just because it is often repeated.
And perhaps this would be a good starting point for the next discussion:
Not immediately ask who is right.
But first:
“Which regulation are we actually discussing?”
