All truck and bus drivers will be required to take their commercial driver’s license tests in English as the Trump administration expands its aggressive campaign to improve safety in the industry and get unqualified drivers off the road.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the latest effort Friday to ensure drivers meet federal requirements to understand English well enough to read road signs and communicate with law enforcement. Florida has already begun administering its tests in English.
Many states now allow drivers to take their driver’s license tests in other languages, even if they are required to demonstrate English proficiency. California offered tests in 20 other languages. Duffy said a number of states have hired other companies to administer the commercial driver’s license tests, and those companies don’t enforce the standards drivers must meet to demonstrate their driving and English language skills.
These latest enforcement efforts come just days after the Department of Transportation said 557 driving schools should close because they failed to meet basic safety standards. The department has been aggressively going after states that have issued commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who should not have qualified for them since a fatal crash in August.
A truck driver who Duffy says was not authorized to be in the US made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four members of an Amish community earlier this month, have only heightened concerns.
Duffy says truck drivers should be well qualified
States are expected to ensure drivers can speak English before issuing them a commercial license, and then law enforcement officers would have to check drivers’ language skills during any traffic stops or inspections. Drivers who cannot communicate effectively should be taken off the road. A recent federal effort involving 8,215 inspections resulted in the disqualification of nearly 500 drivers because of their English proficiency. California initially resisted enforcing the English rules, but the state recently took more than 600 drivers off the highways.
Duffy said every American wants the drivers who get behind the wheel of a big rig to be well-qualified to handle those vehicles. But he said that for too long the problems in the trucking industry have been “left to fester and no one pays attention to it for decades.”
“Once you start paying attention, you see that all these bad things have happened. And the consequence is that Americans are getting hurt,” Duffy said. “When we get on the road, we should expect to be safe. And that the people driving those 80,000-pound big rigs, that they’re well trained, they’re well qualified, and they’re going to be safe.”
More efforts to combat fraudulent companies
The campaign will also now expand to prevent fraudulent trucking companies from entering the business, while continuing to go after questionable schools and ensure states follow all commercial licensing regulations.
Duffy said the registration system and requirements for trucking companies will be strengthened, while Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors conduct more spot checks at trucks and commercial driver’s license schools.
Officials also try to ensure that the electronic recording devices used by drivers are accurate and that states follow all regulations to ensure that drivers are qualified to obtain commercial licenses.
“Chameleon carriers” avoid enforcement
Currently, companies only have to pay $300 and show proof of insurance to register to operate, and then may not be audited for a year or more. And even then, audits could be conducted virtually, making it less likely to identify fraudulent companies.
This has led to fraudulent companies known in the industry as “chameleon carriers” registering multiple times under different names and then simply changing their names and registration numbers to avoid any consequences after accidents or other violations.
Dan Horvath, who is chief operating officer of the trade group American Trucking Associations, said the long-standing problem has caused companies that have been ordered to close to simply change their name and registration number and continue to operate as they have.
“What we think has happened at ATA over the years is that we have had a lack of real enforcement and intervention with motor carriers that are in operation,” Horvath said. Only a small fraction of trucking companies ever undergo a full compliance review with an in-person inspection, he said.
Previous enforcement efforts
After that crash in Indiana, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration took the company that employed the driver out of business and pulled the DOT numbers assigned to two other companies that were linked to AJ Partners. Tutash Express and Sam Express in the Chicago area were also disqualified, and the Aydana driving school attended by the trucker involved in the crash lost its certification.
Immigration authorities arrested that driver because they said the 30-year-old from Kyrgyzstan had entered the country illegally. Authorities say he pulled over and tried to pass a truck that had slowed in front of him, and his truck collided with an oncoming van.
In December, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration moved to decertify up to 7,500 of the 16,000 schools nationwide, but that included many defunct operations.
Duffy said the companies involved in that Indiana crash were all registered to the same apartment. In other cases, there could be hundreds of these chameleon companies registered at a single address.