Half the split-sleeper questions on driver forums come from expecting the provision to do things it was never designed to do. Here's the honest list.
The 60/70-hour limit counts on-duty time only. Sleeper-berth hours — split or not — never add to it and never subtract from it. A driver running splits every day reaches the weekly cap on the same schedule as one taking full resets; only the rest pattern differs. Weekly hours come back through a 34-hour restart or a stretch of short days. Split sleeper helps you finish a day, not survive a week.
Driving time accumulates across the whole split. Drive 7 hours before your first break and 4 after your second and you've used all 11 — the window may have hours left, but the wheels don't. Only 10 consecutive hours off duty (or the equivalent combinations) starts a fresh 11.
Until the second qualifying break is complete, nothing is excluded. A 3-hour off-duty break you never follow with a 7-hour berth period is just 3 hours of ordinary off-duty — it counted against your window the whole time. There is no partial credit.
Log 30 minutes of on-duty inside your "berth period", cut the berth stretch to 6.5 hours, or stop 30 minutes short of 10 total, and the whole split fails. At inspection, both breaks get counted back into the 14-hour window — which frequently exposes a secondary 14-hour or 11-hour violation that had been running masked. A 14-hour violation carries a severity weight of 7 in FMCSA's Safety Measurement System, and if the underlying limits were exceeded you can be placed out of service on the spot.
You still need a 30-minute non-driving interruption after 8 hours of driving. The good news: both of your split breaks are far longer than 30 minutes, so either one covers it — provided it falls after 8 cumulative driving hours since your last qualifying interruption.
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Rule basis: 49 CFR 395.1(g)(1), 395.3(a)(3), 395.3(b) via eCFR.