Snippets: Trucking companies in Texas often gamble on drivers such as Mr. Rodriguez, a seven-month Dallas Morning News investigation has found. They hire illegal immigrants who struggle to read road signs and communicate in English with police and emergency personnel. They hire felons, drunks and drug addicts. Sometimes, they make only cursory checks of work history and driving records, then put the new hires behind the wheel of rigs with the destructive potential of guided missiles.
Trooper Randy McDonald, based in Decatur, northwest of Fort Worth, said that when he recently ticketed a big-rig driver for a local oil company, the trucker passed on a message from his boss: The troopers could write all the tickets they wanted, but it wouldn't change anything. The company was willing to break truck weight limits and other safety rules to maximize profits.
Every driver a company hires is supposed to read and speak English well enough to converse with the general public, understand highway traffic signs and signals, respond to official inquiries and make entries on reports and records.
Texas doesn't require intrastate truck drivers to speak English and doesn't enforce the English- language requirement on interstate drivers unless "it becomes a true safety issue," said Maj. Rogers. He said the law was never intended to be enforced in roadside inspections, rather by the companies themselves.
TSA security not expected at 7 airports
Snippets (IMHO this is absurd in today's world): Federal screeners will not be put to work at the seven Montana airports that do not screen passengers before boarding planes, the Transportation Security Administration has decided because of budget limitations.
"The bad thing is if you wanted to get on a plane in Wolf Point with something, you could. You could have come in from Canada and you could get on the plane and fly it into some place," he said. "We need to be prepared."
Trains, bus, planes...mass transportation...needs tightening and checking.
Thanks for that post MamaDearest.