All truckers and bus drivers in the United States 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 has already started administering its tests in English.
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 license 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 qualified to handle the vehicles. But Duffy said that problems in the trucking industry were "allowed to rot and no one's paying attention to it for decades."
"Once you start to pay attention, you see that all these bad things have been happening. And the consequence of that is that Americans get hurt," Duffy said. "When we get on the road, we should expect that we should be safe.
"And that those who drive those 80,000-pound big rigs, that they are well-trained, they're well-qualified, and they're going to be safe."
The campaign will also expand to prevent fraudulent trucking companies from getting into the business while continuing to go after questionable schools and ensure states are complying with the regulations for handing out commercial licenses.
Earlier this week, the Department of Transportation said 557 driving schools should close because they failed to meet basic safety standards. And the department has been aggressively going after states that issued commercial driver's licenses to immigrants who shouldn't have qualified for them since a fatal crash in August.
Duffy says a commercial truck driver 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.
Companies currently have to pay only a few hundred dollars and show proof of insurance to get registered to operate, and then they might not be audited for a year or longer.
That has made it easy for fraudulent companies that are known in the industry as chameleon carriers to register under different names and then 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 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 because they say the 30-year-old from Kyrgyzstan 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 struck 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 these chameleon companies registered at a single address.
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