All commercial truck drivers in the United States will be required to complete their license tests in English, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Friday.
The move follows several recent high-profile crashes involving illegal immigrants behind the wheel of commercial semi-trucks. Duffy has made trucking safety and cracking down on commercial driver’s license regulations central to his tenure at the helm of the Department of Transportation.
“It’s English only. You take the test in English. You can’t speak English? You can’t read English? You’re not going to do well in the test, because every test is going to be required to be given in English,” Duffy said.
He said the policy is part of a crackdown on state policies that allow big-rig drivers to take their commercial driver’s license exams in several other languages, even though English is the primary language on road signs across the country.
The DOT’s policy push surrounding non-English speaking and illegal immigrant truck drivers really kick-started back in August, when an illegal immigrant behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler caused a fatal crash on the Florida turnpike. Though he was granted CDLs in Washington and California, the driver failed an English proficiency exam, correctly answering 2 of 12 questions and identifying 1 of 4 road signs.
Another similar, deadly commercial vehicle crash occurred just last week, when an illegal immigrant with a CDL swerved into a van and killed four people in Indiana.
“Do you want well-trained, well-qualified drivers behind the wheel of a big rig driving on American roads? It’s very simple. I think the answer is, every single American, no matter what your political stripes are, that’s exactly what you want,” Duffy said Friday
In addition to the required English-language road tests, Duffy announced that DOT will modernize the trucking registration system, crack down on carrier fraud, and increase regulations on driver safety.
Large truck crashes have increased by 43% over the last 10 years, up to 2023, according to the National Safety Council, a safety nonprofit group, although they trended slightly downward from 2022 to 2023.
About 70% of fatalities from large truck crashes involve people in the other non-truck vehicle, according to the non-profit.
“It’s been allowed to rot, and no one has paid attention to it for decades,” Duffy said of the regulations around the American trucking industry.
“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 when we get on the road,” Duffy continued. “We should expect that we should be safe and that those who drive those 80,000-pound big rigs that they are well-trained.”
