Fleet compliance: licence checks and annual inspections

The core fits in one sentence: the employer must have vehicles inspected for their operational safety by a competent person as needed, but at least once a year (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 57(1)). “As needed” means that the annual date is the floor, not the plan. An accident, a conversion of the load area or a defect report that goes beyond a trifle can make an inspection necessary before the next regular date. The record therefore needs more than the annual date; it needs a way to bring it forward.

The implementation guidance to Section 57 explains what “operationally safe” means: the inspection covers both the roadworthy and the work-safe condition of the vehicle (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 57). Roadworthiness concerns what a general inspection also looks at, such as brakes, steering, lights and tyres. Work safety concerns what working with the vehicle involves. The guidance gives warning clothing and load securing equipment as examples; in vans, bulkheads to the load area, shelving systems and bodywork usually belong to it as well. For bodywork such as loading cranes or aerial work platforms, the guidance also refers to inspections under separate rules, for example the Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health.

For roadworthiness, the implementation guidance allows a shortcut: it counts as inspected if there is a defect-free result from an expert inspection under the StVZO. For cars and motorcycles it goes further: if an authorised specialist workshop has issued a defect-free result for a manufacturer-specified and properly performed service, and that result also covers the work-safe condition, for example the presence and condition of warning clothing and load securing equipment, the competent-person inspection counts as done (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 57). For a business with a car fleet this is the practical route: service and safety inspection fall on one date if the workshop explicitly confirms the work-safe condition in its report.

According to the implementation guidance, a competent person is someone who, through professional training and experience, has sufficient knowledge of vehicle engineering and is familiar enough with the relevant rules to assess whether a vehicle is operationally safe. That can be the in-house workshop, a garage or an inspection organisation. What matters for the record is that the name or unit of the inspector is filed together with the report, so that it is clear later who assessed the condition.

The statistics of general inspections show how often vehicles develop defects between two dates. In 2025 the defect rate across all vehicles presented was 33.2 percent (KBA). For cars, one or more defects were found on around 8.0 million vehicles (KBA), so roughly one in three cars inspected was affected (KBA). The figures say nothing about company vehicles in particular. But they show why an inspection with a date, a result and a report is worth more than assuming a vehicle is fine because it is on the road every day.

Between the annual dates lies the condition check by the driver. Before each shift, the driver must check that the controls and safety devices work, report any defects found to the supervisor in charge and stop using the vehicle if defects endanger its operational safety (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 36). For a digital workflow this is the second input: a defect report captured with a form at the vehicle belongs to the same record as the inspection report. It can bring the next inspection forward or take the vehicle out of assignment until it is repaired.

There is no comparable deadline rule for the driving entitlement. Section 21 of the Road Traffic Act penalises the keeper who orders or allows driving without an entitlement, but it does not say how often the keeper must check. The accident prevention regulation also sets conditions for drivers but no check interval (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 35). That is not a free pass but a task: the business sets the interval itself, justifies it and can show that it keeps to it. A one-off check at hiring hardly carries that justification, because a driving entitlement can be lost at any time.

The driving aptitude register shows how often that happens: in 2025, 85,864 driving entitlements were revoked (KBA). On top of that come driving bans, which an administrative authority or a court can impose for one to three months (StVG, Sec. 25(1)). For the duration of the ban, a licence issued by a German authority is held in official custody (StVG, Sec. 25(2a)). A visual check therefore only confirms the state on that day: a ban that takes effect afterwards, or a revocation in the weeks after the check, remains invisible to it.

The gap between two checks is closed not by software but by an agreement. Anyone who drives a company vehicle reports a revocation, driving ban or restriction of their entitlement without delay. This reporting duty belongs in the vehicle use agreement or the work instruction, and the record notes that it was communicated and acknowledged. The regular visual check then confirms that the details are still correct, and the reporting duty covers the time in between.

For the check itself, the original document is usually enough. The driving entitlement must be proven by a valid official certificate, and a valid licence must be carried when driving a motor vehicle (FeV, Sec. 4(2)). Every visual check covers the same points and records them:

Which interval is appropriate depends on the business: on the number of trips, the type of vehicles and whether someone drives every day or occasionally takes a pool car. In the deadline record the interval is therefore a value per person or group, not a hard-coded one. If the business changes its rule, it changes a parameter and all due dates are recalculated. The decision itself and its reasoning belong in writing in the fleet policy.

The record follows from the duties. It has two halves linked by the assignment: for each vehicle the inspection dates and evidence, for each person the entitlement, the checks and the briefing. A spreadsheet can hold this as long as one person maintains it and nobody else writes at the same time. As soon as the workshop, HR and dispatch look at the same dates, a shared data set with role-based rights is the more stable route. When moving away from the spreadsheet pays off is covered in the article Replacing spreadsheet workarounds.

Due dates are calculated from these fields, not typed in by hand. For the safety inspection the due date is the last inspection date plus the interval, where the interval is one year at most and can be shorter if the use or condition of the vehicle requires it. For a time-limited category the expiry date is the due date; for the visual check it is the date of the last check plus the business interval. Once the logic is defined this way, no calendar follow-up is needed; the overview emerges from the data, just as the article on tracking inspection deadlines without paper describes for work equipment.

The real gain lies in the link. When a vehicle is assigned to a person, permanently as a company car, by the day as a pool vehicle or through shift planning, the workflow checks three things: whether the vehicle has a valid safety inspection and general inspection, whether the person holds the required category, and whether their last check lies within the interval. If one of the three fails, the assignment does not fail silently but states the reason. How such checks are built into a plan is shown in the article on shift rosters that check rest periods and qualifications.

For the safety inspection, the regulation prescribes the evidence: the results must be recorded in writing and kept at least until the next inspection (DGUV Regulation 70, Sec. 57(2)). The implementation guidance names an inspection log, an inspection card index or an inspection report as examples. In a digital workflow this is the report from the workshop or competent person, filed with the vehicle, with inspection date, inspecting body, result and, where there were defects, confirmation that they have been fixed. Which form the responsible accident insurance institution expects in a given case can be clarified with it before the paper binder is retired.

So that reports do not end up as attachments in someone's inbox, filing needs a fixed entry point: a shared mailbox or an upload on the vehicle record, from which the report is matched via number plate or internal number. Text recognition can read the inspection date and number plate from the document and make a suggestion that a person confirms. How such capture is set up is described on the page on document digitisation.

For licence checks the opposite principle applies: file as little as possible. Personal data must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purpose (GDPR, Art. 5(1)(c)). To prove a check, date, checking person, categories seen, expiry dates and the result are usually enough. A full copy of the card with photo and licence number is mostly not needed for this; anyone who files one anyway records the reason and keeps access tight. Which other questions need answering when digitising processes involving personal data is collected in the article on data protection when digitising processes.

Access to and retention of driver data follow the rules of the personnel file, not those of the vehicle file. The workshop and dispatch can see whether a person is cleared for a vehicle group, but not the details of their entitlement. How rights and retention periods are handled in a digital personnel file is described in the article Digital personnel files: access, retention and evidence.

Besides inspection and check dates, a fleet carries contracts with their own deadlines: leasing, insurance, maintenance contracts and fuel cards. They do not belong in the inspection deadline record but in a contract register with notice and renewal dates. How to build such a register is shown in the article on contract registers, notice periods and renewals.

Moving from a binder to a deadline record is not a major project if it happens in the right order. Five steps keep it manageable, and each one on its own already leaves you in a better position than before:

Sectors differ mainly on the vehicle side. In the trades, vans with shelving and load securing often shape the picture; in logistics, heavy vehicles with safety checks and time-limited categories; at service providers, pool vehicles used occasionally by many people. The record is the same in all three cases; what differs is the inspection intervals, the check intervals and who does the assigning.