Truck drivers are questioning the Trump administration's English mandate

The Trump administration has been fixated on truck drivers, with President Donald Trump arguing that there should be English language requirements for people behind the wheel of commercial trucks. The administration has put regulatory pressure on trucking companies and recently threatened to withhold federal funding to Democratic states that don't comply with English requirements. While some truck drivers have praised the decision, calling it necessary for road safety, others are worried it could lead to racial profiling and other problems.

'Americans are a lot safer'

The Trump administration is taking these steps after "high-profile examples of fatal crashes involving truckers who could not speak English and did not understand all of the road signs in front of them," said Newsweek. A recent probe claimed that California, New Mexico and Washington "did not properly put drivers out of service for violations of rules around English-language proficiency."

English prerequisites for truck drivers aren't new; federal guidelines already "require truck drivers to pass roadside English tests and demonstrate the ability to read and speak English, though enforcement is left to individual states," said NewsNation. This has led the Trump administration to claim that lax enforcement is behind road deaths. Trump signed an executive order "directing enforcement of a rule requiring commercial drivers in the U.S. to meet English proficiency standards," said Reuters.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

"Americans are a lot safer on roads alongside truckers who can understand and interpret our traffic signs," said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement. Trucker trade groups also lauded the decision. This is a "necessary and welcome step toward ensuring safety and accountability on our nation's highways," American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement. "Every commercial driver operating in the United States must be able to read road signs."

Concerns over racial profiling

Enforcement could be "uneven around the country," former trucker Adam Wingfield, who is now a trucking consultant, told USA Today. The "same concerns about English-language testing" apply to "many other traffic violations."

This could lead to enforcement issues for various police agencies. At the "end of the day, the person who is enforcing is still a human and can have different kinds of biases," Wingfield said to USA Today. "It's a lot like stop and frisk — you're going to have some states do more enforcement and others do less."

Many "foreign-born drivers worry their careers could be in jeopardy if they're unfairly penalized by arbitrary inspections," said The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some truck drivers have a "strong accent. So if the officer doesn't understand you, whatever you're telling him, your chance of him telling you, 'I can't understand,' it will be very high," said Khader Hassan, a Somali-born truck driver, to the outlet.

Others say that not knowing English is less of a problem when on the road. Language barriers "pose a challenge not so much in driver capability or proficiency, but in the level of communication required to understand and cooperate with regulators and authorities," said Seth Millican, the president and CEO of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, to the Journal-Constitution.

Language and nationality may have little to do with driver safety altogether. "Just because you're an American doesn't mean you're going to follow the rules," Wingfield told USA Today. "I know that there are cold-blooded Americans who I wouldn't trust with a set of keys."