Behind every tachograph record there is a small plastic card that belongs to the driver, not the company. The driver digital tachograph card is the personal identity inside the system: it stores who drove, when, and what they did, and it moves with the driver from vehicle to vehicle and employer to employer. For operators, the card is the hinge between the driver and every drivers’ hours record you will ever be asked to produce - so the administrative rules around it deserve more attention than they usually get.
You need a driver card to drive a vehicle fitted with a digital tachograph in scope of the rules. Applications go through DVLA’s service: you can apply for a first GB card, renew an expiring one, replace a lost or stolen card, or exchange an EU, EEA or Northern Ireland card for a GB one. The fees, as published: £32 for a first GB driver digital tachograph card, £19 to renew an expired card, £19 to replace a lost or stolen card, and £32 to change an EU, EEA or Northern Ireland card to a GB card.
The card is valid for five years. It is personal to the driver: one card, one person, and lending or borrowing a card is an offence-level misuse, not a shortcut. Drivers with expired or unavailable cards cannot simply drive in-scope vehicles and sort it out later - the card is the mechanism that makes the record, and no card means no lawful driving in scope.
The rule here is immediacy: you must tell DVLA immediately if your card is lost, stolen, damaged or not working properly, and then apply for a replacement. The replacement fee is £19.
The interim period is where discipline matters. The drivers’ hours rules allow a driver to continue driving for a limited period without a card while awaiting a replacement, but only on conditions - daily printouts from the vehicle unit, endorsed with the driver’s details and signature, covering everything the card would have recorded. It is an emergency bridge, not an alternative state, and it has a strict time limit. Operators should treat any driver on printouts as a named exception being managed to a deadline, with the replacement application evidenced in the file.
A damaged card that still partially works is not “fine” - an unreadable card at a roadside check is a problem the driver cannot talk their way out of. Report and replace.
The card is the driver’s property and the driver’s duty, but the operator’s compliance system depends on it, so good operators manage around it:
Applications can also be made on the paper D777B form where the digital route does not fit - the form is the standing fallback and covers the same first, renewal and replacement cases. Whichever route is used, keep the application confirmation with the driver’s file; it is the evidence that the card timeline was managed, not merely asserted.
The driver card is where the tachograph system touches a person, and most card problems are really timing problems: expiries not tracked, losses not reported the same day, replacements not chased. Each is cheap to prevent and awkward to explain after the fact. Build the tracking, write the lost-card drill, and the card layer of your hours compliance runs itself.