Every HGV on an Irish road is supposed to have been checked that day — before it turned a wheel in anger. That’s not best practice or an insurance nicety; it’s a legal duty under S.I. No. 348 of 2013. This guide covers who has to do the daily walkaround check, what exactly must be looked at, how defects have to be recorded, how long you must keep the records, and how the RSA uses those records when they come to inspect. There’s a full checklist table you can work from, and a printable version at the end.

What does the law actually require?

The daily walkaround check comes from S.I. No. 348 of 2013 — the regulations that govern the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles in Ireland. The rule itself is short: a commercial vehicle must be checked before it is first used on a public road each day. The check doesn’t have to be repeated for every journey — it’s required at most once in any 24-hour period — but it must happen before that first use.

The check must be carried out by a trained person. That can be the driver or a mechanic — the regulations don’t insist on a qualified fitter — but “trained” is doing real work in that sentence. Whoever does the check needs to know what they’re looking at and what a defect looks like on that type of vehicle. If your drivers do the checks, you should be able to show how they were trained to do them: an induction record, a toolbox talk, a signed-off procedure. An untrained tick-box exercise doesn’t satisfy the regulation, and it won’t survive an inspector’s questions either.

The check covers the inside and the outside of the vehicle, plus items that can only be assessed with the engine running. Schedule 1 of the regulations lists the items — we’ve laid them out as a working checklist below. If the vehicle tows a trailer, the trailer is part of the check too: coupling, lights, tyres, body and load security all included.

What must be checked: the full walkaround checklist

The items below follow Schedule 1 of S.I. 348/2013, organised the way drivers actually work: start in the cab, walk around the outside, then finish with the checks that need the engine running. Work in the same order every day — a fixed routine is what stops items being skipped on a wet Monday in January.

Stage	Item	What you’re checking for
In the cab	Mirrors	All fitted, secure, clean, correctly adjusted, no cracks
In the cab	Windows and windscreen	Clear view, no cracks or chips in the driver’s line of sight
In the cab	Controls	All driving controls work freely and as intended
In the cab	Safety belts	Present, undamaged, latch and retract properly
In the cab	Wipers and washers	Blades clear the screen, washer fluid sprays
In the cab	Horn	Sounds when operated
In the cab	Tachograph	Working, calibrated, correct time, driver card inserted, enough printer roll
In the cab	Warning lights and gauges	No active fault warnings after start-up
In the cab	Air build-up and warning systems	Air pressure builds normally, low-pressure warning works, no audible leaks
Outside	Tyres and wheels	Tread depth, inflation, no cuts or bulges, wheel nuts secure (check nut indicators)
Outside	Lights and indicators	All lamps work, lenses clean and unbroken — including the trailer
Outside	Reflectors and markings	Present, clean, not broken or obscured
Outside	Exhaust	Secure, no excessive smoke or noise, no leaks
Outside	Coupling and trailer connections	Fifth wheel/coupling secure, air lines and electrical connections sound
Outside	Body and structure	Doors, curtains, tail lift, mudguards and bodywork secure; nothing hanging loose
Outside	Fluids and leaks	Oil, coolant and fuel levels; no fresh leaks under the vehicle
Outside	Fuel system	Filler cap present and secure, no fuel smell or seepage
Outside	Load security	Load restrained, curtains/straps/chains in good order, weight properly distributed
Engine running	Steering	No excessive free play, no unusual stiffness or noise
Engine running	Brakes	Service and parking brakes operate correctly, pressure holds, no warnings

Two of these items deserve a special mention. The tachograph is on the Schedule 1 list — plenty of operators are surprised by that. A walkaround that ignores the tacho head is incomplete, and a driver who sets off with no card inserted has created a drivers’-hours problem before the first junction. And load security changes during the day: if the load changes, the restraint needs to be re-checked, even though the walkaround itself isn’t repeated.

Recording defects: what a compliant record looks like

Finding a defect is half the job. The regulations are specific about what must be written down when something is wrong. A defect record must contain three things: a description of the defect, the time and date it was found, and any temporary measures taken to deal with it — for example, a bulb replaced at the yard, or a vehicle restricted to local work pending repair.

“Nil defect” reporting — recording the check even when nothing is wrong — isn’t spelt out as a separate duty, but in practice it’s how you prove the checks happened at all. A folder of defect sheets with month-long gaps tells an inspector one of two things: either your fleet is miraculously fault-free, or nobody is really checking. Neither reads well.

Dangerous defects are treated differently. If a defect is dangerous, the vehicle must not be used on a public road until a suitably qualified person certifies that it has been repaired. That’s a hard stop — the vehicle stays where it is, the run gets re-planned, and the repair gets signed off before the truck moves again. A driver who finds a dangerous defect mid-route reports it and parks up; the decision to keep rolling isn’t theirs or yours to make.

How long must walkaround and defect records be kept?

Maintenance and defect records — including daily walkaround check reports — must be kept for at least two years under S.I. 348/2013. That’s two years of daily reports per vehicle: for a 20-vehicle fleet on paper, that’s well over 14,000 sheets that all need to be findable when an inspector asks. Keep them organised by vehicle and date, whichever format you use; a record you can’t produce might as well not exist.

How the RSA inspects your records — and your risk rating

The RSA carries out inspections at operator premises as well as at the roadside. At a premises inspection, walkaround and defect records are examined alongside your maintenance planning: do checks happen every day the vehicle works? Are defects recorded properly, with times, dates and the action taken? Do dangerous defects show a repair certified before the vehicle went back out? Inspectors read records the way an auditor reads accounts — they’re looking for the gaps and the patterns, not just the paperwork that’s present.

What they find feeds your operator risk rating. Ireland now uses the EU Common Formula for risk rating (introduced under Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/695, replacing the older CVORI system), which works on a rolling three-year window and produces separate ratings for roadworthiness and for drivers’ hours. Operators rated red can expect to be inspected more often — at the roadside and at the premises. The flip side is just as real: a clean, complete record trail is the cheapest way to be left alone to run your fleet.

Paper checklists vs a walkaround app

Paper works — until it doesn’t. The regulation doesn’t care whether your records are on paper or in an app, but the failure modes are very different. Here’s the honest comparison:

	Paper checklist	Walkaround app
Proof the check happened	A signature and a date — written any time, anywhere	Time-stamped, geo-stamped, with photos of defects
Defect reaching the workshop	When the sheet reaches the office — sometimes days later	Instantly, with a photo, so the repair is booked the same morning
Two-year retention	Boxes of sheets; fading ink, missing pages, coffee rings	Searchable archive by vehicle, driver and date
Producing records at inspection	Hours of digging, hoping nothing is missing	Filter, export, done in minutes
Spotting drivers who pencil-whip checks	Nearly impossible	Checks completed in 90 seconds at the gate stand out immediately
Cost	Cheap per sheet; expensive per missing record	A monthly per-vehicle fee

Plenty of well-run Irish fleets still use paper, and a disciplined paper system beats a neglected app. But the two questions an inspector cares about — did the check really happen? and can you produce the record? — are exactly the two questions an app answers automatically.