A device fault is not a violation. Handling it badly is. The regulation sets out exactly who does what, and the whole sequence starts the moment the vehicle is parked.
Key takeaways
When an ELD displays a malfunction or data diagnostic code, the driver must notify the motor carrier as soon as the vehicle is parked. On that day’s record of duty status the driver records the code as set out in the Technical Standard, the date and time the code was noticed, and the time notification was transmitted to the carrier, and then records that code in every following record of duty status until the ELD is repaired or replaced.
Meanwhile the driver reverts to paper. The regulation requires a record of duty status to be filled out each day where the ELD is displaying a malfunction or data diagnostic code, and Transport Canada’s guidance to drivers is blunt about the timing: switch to using paper daily logs until you return to the home terminal from your current trip.
This is why the information packet exists
Every vehicle must carry an ELD information packet containing, among other things, an instruction sheet describing the measures to take in the event that the ELD malfunctions, and enough blank records of duty status for at least 15 days. If a driver has to phone the office to ask what to do, the packet is missing or nobody has read it.
The carrier’s first duty is preventive: it must ensure that any ELD installed or used in a vehicle it operates is in good working order and is calibrated and maintained in accordance with the manufacturer’s or seller’s specifications.
Once notified, the repair clock runs. The carrier must repair or replace the device within 14 days after the day on which it was notified or otherwise became aware, or at the latest upon return of the driver to the home terminal from a planned trip if that return exceeds the 14-day period. Transport Canada states the same rule in plain terms for drivers: repair or replacement should happen within 14 days, or once you return to the carrier’s home terminal if your trip was longer than 14 days.
There is a mandatory written record, and it is specific. The carrier must maintain a register of malfunction or data diagnostic codes containing the name of the driver who noticed the code, the name of each driver who used the vehicle after the discovery until the ELD was repaired or replaced, the make, model and serial number of the ELD, the licence plate or vehicle identification number, the date the code was noticed and the location of the vehicle on that date, the date the carrier was notified, the date the ELD was replaced or repaired, and a concise description of the actions taken.
That register must be kept for six months from the day on which the ELD is replaced or repaired, and an inspector may require the carrier to produce it: the regulation lists the register of ELD malfunction or data diagnostic codes among the documents a motor carrier must produce for inspection during business hours, alongside the records of duty status, the unidentified-driver records and the information packet documents.
British Columbia imposes the same obligations on carriers operating within the province, at ELD malfunction — eight register fields, the same 14-day repair window, and the same six-month retention from repair or replacement. Where the trip is intra-provincial in British Columbia, that is the provision to name.
Two failure modes turn a technical fault into an enforcement problem.
The first is silence: continuing to drive on a device that is showing a code, without a paper log and without notifying the office. The requirement to keep a paper record while a code is displayed exists precisely for this window.
The second is interference. The regulation prohibits any person from disabling, deactivating, disengaging, jamming or otherwise blocking or degrading a signal transmission or reception, or re-engineering, reprogramming or otherwise tampering with an ELD so that it does not accurately record and retain the required data. Doing that is also a ground for an out-of-service declaration where the inspector cannot determine compliance — and where the record has been falsified, the declaration runs for 72 consecutive hours and continues until the record is rectified. A driver who unplugs a misbehaving unit to “reset” it in front of an officer has manufactured a far worse day.
A driver 900 kilometres from home notices a code on Tuesday morning at a fuel stop. She parks, phones dispatch, notes the code and the time in her log, starts a paper record that afternoon, and keeps writing the code on every sheet after that. Dispatch opens a register entry the same morning: driver name, unit, plate, ELD make, model and serial number, the code, the location, and the date it was reported.
The office books a replacement head unit at a shop on the return leg for Friday — day four, comfortably inside the 14-day window. A second driver takes the same tractor on Wednesday night, so his name is added to the register as a driver who used the vehicle after discovery. When the unit is swapped, the register records the replacement date and a one-line description of what was done, and the entry is retained for six months from that date.
Nothing dramatic happened. But if a facility audit arrives in four months, the carrier can show a complete chain: fault noticed, reported, papered, repaired, recorded.
Two narrow jobs. First, watching for codes across the fleet and opening the register entry automatically with the fields that can be read from telematics — unit, plate, serial number, date, location — so the office only has to add the human parts. Second, tracking the 14-day repair window and the six-month retention date, which are the two deadlines that quietly slip.
It does not diagnose the fault, decide whether a device has been repaired properly, or determine whether a driver’s paper reconstruction of a day is accurate. Those are engineering and management judgements; the record just has to be complete and honest.
The regulation treats them together for reporting purposes — the duty is triggered where the device is displaying a malfunction or data diagnostic code set out in Table 4 of Schedule 2 of the Technical Standard. Report both, and record both.
A driver may produce either the display or a printout of the records, and must transmit them only by a method the ELD supports and the inspector identifies. A device that cannot display, print or transfer is functionally a malfunction; treat it as one.
Yes, if the paper log discipline holds and the register is open. The 14-day window is a repair deadline for the carrier, not a grounding order — but every driver who uses that vehicle in the interim has to be named in the register.
The carrier. The duty to keep devices in good working order and to repair or replace within the window sits on the motor carrier under the regulation, and Ontario lists completing and maintaining accurate hours of service records including supporting documents among a CVOR operator’s own responsibilities.
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