The Trump administration is intensifying its efforts to enhance road safety by mandating that all truck and bus drivers undergo their commercial driver’s license exams exclusively in English. This move aims to eliminate unqualified drivers from the industry.
On Friday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined this initiative, emphasizing the need for drivers to comprehend English sufficiently. This proficiency is vital for reading road signs and conversing with law enforcement officials. Florida has already adopted the practice of conducting these tests in English.
While many states currently permit drivers to take their tests in various languages, the requirement for English proficiency remains. For instance, California offers exams in 20 different languages. Duffy highlighted that several states have outsourced their commercial driver’s license tests to external companies, which often fail to enforce the necessary standards.
“The third-party testers are complicit in this issue as they inadequately assess candidates from substandard schools,” Duffy remarked.
Duffy stressed the importance of ensuring that drivers operating large trucks are thoroughly qualified.
The initiative will also target fraudulent trucking enterprises and dubious driving schools while ensuring that states adhere to all regulations concerning the issuance of 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.
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