Truck and bus drivers, as professionals, need to comply with driving and rest time rules. Where road transport is professionalized, a set of regulations fixes maximum driving time and minimum rest time to ensure road safety and avoid driver fatigue. In the meantime, medium and heavy-duty vehicles are generally not allowed to drive as fast as lighter vehicles, and authorities need to assess drivers' compliance with maximum speeds allowed for their vehicle combination, not only at a given place and time, but also with a historical view. Tachographs are the technological solution allowing recording of both timing and speed profile history.

Tachograph devices have been around for several decades for trucks and buses driven by professional drivers, with the first analogue versions appearing in the 1950s. These early devices used a paper disc placed under the speedometer that rotated slowly over time, printing the vehicle's speed on the paper for recording and control purposes.

At the end of the day, the driver collected the paper disk and gave it to his employer for driving times and salary calculations, as well as long-term storage. Back in the day, tampering with such devices was quite easy, leading to false recordings of speed and driving time. To reduce the risk of tampering, tachograph suppliers mixed analog and digital technologies, displacing the disk from under the speedometer to dedicated hardware.

True digital tachographs were made mandatory in the period 2005–2006. Such devices recorded the same information as the analog tachograph, with greater memory. It was the time when the driver card appeared, allowing the tachograph to identify the driver, and the card to store information on the vehicle driven. Information was stored on both devices, and a printer was used to print end-of-trip or end-of-day driving information.

Smart tachographs are the next step in the evolution of the transportation and logistics market, as they offer a range of benefits for companies, such as allowing more precise control of driving hours and rest periods, ensuring that the driver complies with applicable legislation. Additionally, the data recorded by smart tachographs can be used to identify areas for improvement in driver and vehicle performance, optimizing operational efficiency.

https://www.fleet.vdo.com/vdo-magazine/dtco-4-1/

https://www.webfleet.com/en_gb/webfleet/blog/smart-tachograph-version-2/

https://www.mapon.com/en/blog/switching-to-smart-tachograph-v2

https://www.basworld.com/content/the-smart-tacho-2-mandatory-from-2025-what-you-need-to-know