Seat belt law feels like car-driver territory until you look at the numbers: professional drivers spend more hours behind the wheel than anyone, and the cab of a truck is no gentler in a crash. The law applies in the cab, the fine is real, and the exemptions are narrower than cab folklore suggests.
GOV.UK states it plainly: you must wear a seat belt if one is fitted in the seat you are using, and there are only a few exceptions. You are also only allowed one person in each seat fitted with a belt. The penalty for not wearing a seat belt when you should is a fine of up to £500.
Modern HGV cabs have belts fitted, so the rule applies to essentially every working truck driver on every journey. It also applies to passengers: a second driver, mate or assessor in a belted passenger seat wears the belt, one person per belted seat, no exceptions for short hops. “It was only up the road” is not a legal category; neither is “I was in the yard” once the vehicle is on a road.
The official list of situations where you do not need to wear a belt includes, among others:
The delivery exemption is the one every multi-drop driver knows, and the one most often stretched. Read the condition: the exemption exists while the vehicle is on deliveries and travelling no more than 50 metres between stops. It is designed for genuine stop-start delivery streets, letting a driver hop out repeatedly without belting up between adjacent doors.
It is not a general multi-drop exemption. The moment the gap between drops exceeds 50 metres, and in most rounds many gaps do, the belt goes on. A driver doing a town centre round with drops every few doors has an exemption; the same driver trunking half a mile to the next industrial estate does not. Cab cameras and telematics make the distinction auditable, and after a collision the first question is rarely about the 50 metres.
A doctor can certify that someone does not have to wear a seat belt for medical reasons, issuing a Certificate of Exemption from Compulsory Seat Belt Wearing. The certificate must be carried and produced if required. Pregnant drivers must still wear a belt unless a doctor certifies otherwise, and disabled drivers and passengers are equally required unless medically exempt, though vehicles may need adaptation.
Occasionally relevant in family-run operations: the driver must make sure any children in the vehicle are in the correct car seat for their height or weight until they are 135cm tall or 12 years old, whichever comes first, and wearing a belt after that. The driver can be fined up to £500 if a child under 14 is not correctly restrained. Taking a child on a run means taking the right seat for them.
Beyond the £500 fine, the belt question lands on the operator in three ways:
Enforcement is simple: a written rule, a walkaround-check-level of habit, spot checks, and cameras reviewed fairly. Drivers belt up in the yard office car park without thinking; the standard inside the truck should be identical.
The belt takes three seconds, and it is the cheapest safety device in the vehicle by a wide margin. The exemption takes 50 metres. Everything else is a decision to accept risk that nobody in the chain, driver, operator or insurer, actually priced.