All truckers and bus drivers will be required to take commercial driver’s license tests in English
All truckers and pass drivers will have 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 that drivers understand English well enough to read road signs and communicate with law enforcement officers. Florida already started administering its tests in English.
Currently, many states allow drivers to take their license tests in other languages even though they are required to demonstrate English proficiency. California offered tests in 20 other languages. And Duffy said that a number of states have hired other companies to administer commercial driver’s licenses tests, and those companies aren’t enforcing the standards that drivers are supposed to meet.
“And the third party tester is participating in the scam because they are not adequately testing the people who went through a sham school,” Duffy said.
He said every American wants drivers who get behind the wheel of a big rig to be well-qualified to handle those vehicles.
The campaign will also now expand to go prevent fraudulent trucking companies from getting into the business while continuing to go after questionable schools and ensure states are complying with all the regulations for handing out commercial licenses.
Earlier this week, the Transportation Department said 557 driving schools should close because they failed to meet basic safety standards. And the department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who shouldn’t have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August.
A truck driver who Duffy says wasn’t authorized to be in the U.S. 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 earlier this month, have only heightened concerns.
Duffy said that the registration system and requirements for trucking companies will be strengthened while Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors conduct more spot checks of trucks and commercial driver’s license schools.
Currently, companies only have to pay a few hundred dollars and show proof of insurance to get registered to operate, and then they might not be audited until a year or more later.
That has made it easy for fraudulent companies that are known in the industry as chameleon carriers to register multiple times under different names and then simply switch names and registration numbers to avoid any consequences after crashes or other violations.
Officials are also trying to make sure that the electronic logging devices drivers use are accurate, and that states are following all the regulations to ensure drivers are qualified to get commercial licenses.
After that Indiana crash, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration knocked the company that employed the driver out of service 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 that the trucker involved in the crash attended lost its certification.
Immigration authorities arrested that driver, Bekzhan Beishekeev from Kyrgystan because the 30-year old entered the country illegally. Authorities say he pulled out and tried to go around a truck that had slowed in front of him and his truck slammed into an oncoming van.
In December, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration took action 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 at the same apartment. In other cases there might be hundreds of companies registered at a single address.