CDL tests will become English only

By Alan Wooten
The Center Square

All commercial driver’s license tests will be administered in English, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Friday.

In a press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs said the move will “strengthen safety and integrity on America’s roads.”

In addition to testing in English, the registration system will be updated with identification verification. Noncompliant CDL training centers and carriers will also be addressed.

“What we’re doing is implementing a rule that will say there’s one language in which you can take your test – it’s English only,” Duffy said. “You take the test in English. You can’t speak English; you can’t read English – you’re not going to do well on the test.”

Most signage in America, including electronic emergency messaging, is in English.

States will be asked to disqualify drivers not meeting English proficiency standards.

“We’ve got to hold every link in the chain accountable as we move through this entire process,” Barrs said.

The administrator outlined how his agency confronts fraud, chameleon carriers, unsafe operators, and abuse across the motor vehicle industry.

“They’re designed to evade and get away with enforcement, compliance and doing the right things,” Barrs said in describing a definition for a chameleon carrier network and referring to a fatal crash in Indiana last week. “This is not an isolated incident. It exposes serious vulnerabilities that we have in our system that we are going to be addressing.

“We’ve got to unmask chameleon carriers. Our investigation into this particular crash confirmed the Indiana crash resulted from a coordinated chameleon effort to network that repeatedly changed their names, and their U.S. DOT numbers, to evade oversight.”

Barrs said the network uncovered is one of many nationwide. Three carriers, he said, were put out of service “in record time.” He described his agency’s approach as using all rules and “tools in the toolbox” to put such carriers out of business as quickly as possible.

More than 7,000 schools for CDLs have been shuttered under the watch of Duffy and Barrs.

“When we get on the road,” Duffy said, “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.”

Audits and investigations were already underway by the Transportation Department and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration before the Aug. 12 triple fatal on the Florida Turnpike. Sixty-six days later, a triple fatal in California sandwiched a rules change proposal that got snarled in litigation.

The first week of February, four people from an Amish community in Indiana lost their lives in a crash with a big rig driven by a man not legally in the United States. That means he should not have been granted a nondomiciled CDL by Pennsylvania.

The trio of tragedies, along with other crashes involving CDL drivers illegally in America, have sparked momentum toward restoring order in the process.

“For years, chameleon carriers, CDL mills, and weak English language proficiency enforcement have allowed unqualified drivers to slip through the cracks compromising safety as well as facilitating fraud,” said President Todd Spencer of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “Rather than lowering standards, the Trump administration is strengthening training, licensing, and qualification protocols to ensure properly trained and vetted drivers operate on our nation’s highways. That is a win for public safety and for the professional truckers who take pride in this industry.”