With more than 13 million lorries on Europe's roads, the EU wants to introduce a new generation of tachographs to improve road safety. But does everyone agree?

Reporter: A black box for truckers

Over 13 million lorries  are in operation on European roads.

the Union wants to introduce  a new generation of tachographs.

A real black box, the tachograph  allows the authorities to check

whether a driver has observed  his driving hours and rest times.

A driver is not allowed to drive  more than nine hours per day,

but those hours aren't always respected.

so they take on work for 100-120 lorries,  but there are only 100 lorries.

You see people from Eastern Europe  driving 24 hours without stopping.

People use false names, they change  discs in the middle of the day.

Tachographs have been compulsory  since 1985 in lorries over 3.5 tonnes.

These discs are  first-generation tachographs.

The latest devices are digital  and allow data to be stored on computers.

Every three months, we have  to download all the data from the lorry.

I put the download key in the tachograph.

And when the green light comes on  it's done.

All the data have been taken.  I take the download key to our computer.

The EU would like to bring in  a third generation

They would offer similar services to  the systems used in this transport company.

In these offices they manage a fleet  of around 100 lorries in real time:

driving hours, location,  load and free space in the trailer.

This crucial information  is available at all times.

He can see here that he has a driver  on the road. He knows what time he left.

He knows the driver has been going  for one hour...

So he knows  how much longer he can work

If he wants to know where the driver is,  he can see him on the map,

and you can see exactly  where the driver is.

The new tachographs would also allow  remote access to data,

so there would be no more need  to stop a lorry to check it.

For this expert, the contribution  of technology is important,

but it can't solve one major problem,  the interpretation of the figures.

It will hardly improve road safety at all  in the sense that we mean it today,

because the chrono-tachograph is only  an instrument to record drivers' activities

which then have to be interpreted  by monitoring agencies.

But this interpretation  of drivers' activities now gives rise

to all sorts of differing interpretations  within the European Union.

which would like to see  harmonised interpretation of the rules.

Another point of friction is the merging

of the professional driver card  and the driving licence.

They say that fraud  concerns mainly the tachograph