Europe launched digital tachographs seven years ago, being concerned by counterfeit devices installed in international cargo and passenger transportation. Each records the speed, time of movement and stops made onto a card. The same technology will be operational in Belarus by 2010.Sergey Pliska, the Head of the Document Protection and Identification Department at Cryptotech, tells us, “At present, all trucks and buses travelling abroad are equipped with electromechanical tachographs, which transform movement into an electric signal. They draw the speed and time onto paper as a diagram — which is difficult to decipher but easy to fake. To avoid this, the EU has launched electronic self-recording devices, which are smaller than a radio recorder. On getting into your vehicle, you insert a special card to record the data of your route. EU police can check a whole month’s data in just a few seconds and print it out to see speed. It’s obviously far more convenient.”
The new device ensures against forgery, being made of tough polycarbonate, laminated at 200 degrees C, while the contact chip is inserted inside, making it impregnable to interference. After two years of studying western analogues, Belarusian scientists have produced the first identification cards for digital tachographs. The first trial batch is being produced at Goznak factory, under an agreement with the Transport Ministry.
Vasily Matveenko
