WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday requiring that truck drivers be able to speak English or be placed out of service.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed via social media a Breitbart report on the anticipated order.
“Today @POTUS and I will be making a big announcement to make our roadways safer and put American truckers first,” Duffy posted, linking to the report.
The order “mandates revising out-of-service criteria to ensure drivers violating English proficiency rules are placed out-of-service, enhancing roadway safety,” according to the report.
Once effective, the order will reverse a 2016 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration policy change made under the Obama administration that removed the requirement to place truck drivers out of service for violating federal English Language Proficiency (ELP) rules.
The issue of English proficiency and related safety concerns among commercial truck drivers was elevated earlier this year after Trump issued an order on March 1 designating English as the official language of the U.S.
An informal sampling of over 500 comments submitted to the Department of Transportation after its recent request for recommendations on regulations that should be scrapped or revised found that roughly 10% – mostly owner-operators – want the department to enforce CDL requirements on speaking English.
Federal motor carrier safety regulations [391.11(b)(2)] requires that drivers “be able to read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, and to respond to official inquiries and to make entries on required reports and records.”
The expected move by the administration on Monday “is a welcome step toward restoring a common-sense safety standard,” said Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer.
“Basic English skills are essential for reading critical road signs, understanding emergency instructions, and interacting with law enforcement. Road signs save lives — but only when they’re understood. That’s why OOIDA petitioned the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance earlier this year to reinstate English proficiency as an out-of-service violation.”
OOIDA’s CVSA request asserts that “the ability to understand and react to road signs, especially in emergency situations, is critical for public and operational safety,” and that the lack of proficiency “has led to increased accidents due to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of safety instructions and road signage.”
However, the reason CVSA members voted to remove English proficiency from its out-of-service policy in 2015 was that it “could not substantiate the safety impacts” FMCSA stated in its 2016 policy change.
Such safety data, if it exists, may no longer be a consideration by CVSA now that DOT is planning to reinstate the out-of-service policy.
NOTE: This article will be updated.
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