All truck and bus drivers will be required to take a professional driver’s license test in English

All truck and bus drivers will be required to take their commercial driver’s license test in English as the Trump administration expands an aggressive campaign to improve safety in the industry and remove unqualified drivers from 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 officers. Florida already began administering its tests in English.

Currently, many states allow drivers to take their license tests in other languages ​​despite requiring them to demonstrate English proficiency. California offers tests in 20 other languages. Duffy said many states hire other companies to administer commercial driver’s license tests, and those companies aren’t enforcing the standards drivers must meet to demonstrate their driving and English skills.

The latest enforcement efforts come days after the Department of Transport said it would shut down 557 driving schools for failing to meet basic safety standards. The department has been aggressively pursuing states that issue commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who were disqualified after a fatal crash in August.

A truck driver who Duffy says is not authorized to be in the U.S. makes an illegal U-turn and crashes in Florida, killing three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four members of the Amish community earlier this month, have raised concerns.

Duffy says the trucks must be well qualified

States are expected to ensure that drivers can speak English before issuing them a professional license, and then law enforcement must check the driver’s language skills during any traffic stop or inspection. Drivers who cannot communicate effectively are considered to be taken off the road. A recent federal effort involving 8,215 inspections disqualified nearly 500 drivers because of their English skills. California initially resisted enforcing English rules, but the state recently pulled more than 600 drivers off the highways.

Duffy said every American wants drivers who get behind the wheel of a big rig to be able to handle those vehicles. But he said the trucking industry’s problems have long been “allowed to fester and ignored for decades.”

“Once you start paying attention, you see that all these bad things are happening. And the result is that Americans are getting hurt,” Duffy said. “When we go out on the road, we have to expect that we’re going to be safe. And 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 attempts to crack down on fraudulent companies

The campaign will now expand to go after questionable schools to prevent fraudulent trucking companies from getting into business and ensure that states are following all rules for handing out commercial licenses.

Duffy said registration systems and requirements for trucking companies will be strengthened while Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors conduct more spot checks of truck and commercial driver licensing schools.

Officials are also trying to ensure that the electronic logging devices used by drivers are accurate, and that states are following all regulations so that drivers are eligible to receive professional licenses.

Avoid applying ‘chameleon carriers’

Currently, companies only have to pay $300 and show proof of insurance to register to operate, and then they may not be audited until a year or so later. And even then audits can be done virtually, making it less likely to identify fraudulent companies.

This has made it easy for fraudulent companies known in the industry as “chameleon carriers” to register multiple times under different names and then change names and registration numbers to avoid any consequences after accidents or other violations.

Dan Horvath, chief operating officer of the American Trucking Association trade group, said the long-standing problem has been a relief to companies that have been ordered to change names and registration numbers and to cease operations.

“We think what’s happened over the years at the AT is that we’ve had a lack of real enforcement and intervention with the motor carriers that are operating,” Horvath said. Only a small fraction of trucking companies undergo full compliance reviews with in-person inspections, he said.

Past enforcement efforts

After that Indiana accident, the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration knocked the company that put the driver out of service and pulled the DOT numbers assigned to two other companies connected to AJ Partners. Tutash Express and Sam Express in the Chicago area were also disqualified, and Aydana Driving School, attended by the truck driver involved in the crash, lost its certification.

Immigration officials arrested the driver because they said the 30-year-old man from Kyrgyzstan had entered the country illegally. Authorities say he pulled out and tried to go around a truck that was slowing in front of him, and his truck crashed into an oncoming van.

In December, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration took action to decertify 7,500 of the 16,000 schools nationwide, but that included many with dysfunctional operations.

Duffy said the companies involved in the Indiana crash were all registered to the same apartment. In other cases, there may be hundreds of these chameleon companies registered at a single address.