Available hours are calculated based on the driver's current work state. Driver work states are only changed from driving to not driving by the vehicle's trip status. This means when a trip starts, the work state changes to driving and when it ends the work state changes to not driving.
MiX Fleet Manager does not automatically change the driver's status to not driving if a vehicle's onboard computer or unit in the asset loses communication, because of say for instance poor communication as a result of lost signal.
You can choose if you want the available hours to be calculated up to the "current date and time" (which is also the default setting) and uses the assumed data as true so that you can proactively warn drivers of any potential violations. This will always trigger a violation if relevant and will sent a notification irrelevant of the stale violation setting. See the diagram below.
In this scenario a drivers is in an assumed driving state and the configuration was set to record the last known driver state based on the "current date and time" before communication was lost. A violation is raised based on assumed data driving data and a notification will be sent at escalation level 1.
There are two calculation settings that you can base the available hours calculation on when losing communication:
Available hours calculated up to the current date and time
In this setting, the violations are raised based on the current date and time, i.e. the driver starts driving, crosses a border and loses communication. A violation is raised based on the fact that we have not had an end-of-trip status from the vehicle yet, and the driver has gone over his available hours.
Available hours based on last comms date and time
In this setting, if the driver starts driving, crosses a border and loses communication, the system will use the last communicated date in the calculation instead of expecting an end of trip. This means if the system has not received any communication from the asset, a violation will not be assumed. Please note however that in some edge cases, the communication is briefly restored and comes in out of sequence and even then a violation can be raised (even if it may be factually incorrect at the time). So at the time the violation was raised, the data that came into MiX Fleet Manager suggested that there was an actual violation and it was raised. When the entire trip comes in however, the available hours will be recalculated and the violation will be removed. This picture is only completed thus when the remainder of the data comes in.
- Click Manage.
- Under Operations, click Database administration.
- Select the relevant organization.
- Click the HOS settings tab on the left.
- Select the relevant option under Calculation settings.
As described above, you can also choose "the last communication data and time from the asset" during driving, which means it will not trigger a violation on assumed data and it will not send a notification based on assumed data as shown in the example below.
To learn more about when violation notifications will be sent and setting thresholds for stale notifications, click here.