Posted on 05/26/2025 7:24:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The left is furious that the Trump administration is officially enforcing (effective date: June 25) the longstanding law that truck drivers must be proficient in English.
The left claims that you don’t need to speak English to drive; this must be bigotry against immigrants, or against Spanish speakers, or against the uneducated, or against certain ethnicities.
It’s not.
Whether one is an immigrant or a native American, whether one has a college degree or just a high school diploma, whether one’s skin color is black or white or plaid or polka-dotted — none of this matters to the question of whether a person can be a safe truck driver.
What does matter?
Whether the person has quick reflexes, respects rule of law, respects pedestrians and other drivers — that all matters. Whether one respects the cargo one is hauling, whether one respects his employer and client — that matters.
Whether one has decent vision and hearing, is attentive enough to make that myriad of split-second decisions between potholes and curbs, between red light and yellow, between debris in the road and people or animals who don’t belong there — that matters.
Whether one is capable of being fully attentive for hours at a time without being distracted by music or cellphone or scenery or a cute girl across the street matters. Distractions like these are among the biggest dangers.
And yes, whether the driver speaks English — the lingua franca of our very diverse United States — is at the top of the list as well. It’s not about prejudice; it’s about functioning in the job.
Not everyone is cut out for being a truck driver. There’s no constitutional right to drive a 60-foot-long, 80,000-lb vehicle full of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of other people’s goods down a road at 70 mph,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
English has been the official language for international aeronautical communications since 1951 and no one complains.
Ping! Another great one!
If you can’t speak it you likely can’t read it either. Therefore, you can’t understand police, construction crews directing traffic or emergency personnel. Nor can you read street signs or exit names. Other than that what’s the big deal, right?
Pres. Bush 43 allowed Mexican truck drivers to drive across the border.
Prior, they had to turnover their load to U.S. drivers at the border.
Would going back to the old way help ?
Helps if the commercial truck driver can read the road signs..
Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos crashed into stopped traffic in Denver.. a Cuban truck driver, killed four people and injured several others
How else are these drivers going to read the road signs so that the idiots know what state they’re in.
Because they are driving in the USA. Not just reading road signs but dash board panel words, wording on other vehicles, communicate with police or other drivers if need be.
The govt could require all signs be in se eral languages /sarc
several
They are terrible drivers.
I was hauling loads of gravel to oil field locations, driving a “ Pete “ pulling a belly dump.
We had a road to take in and one to come back on.
I was coming back to the pit for another round when a foreign driver crossed my lane of traffic...right in front of me.
If I had been loaded I wouldn’t have been able to stop
OSHA rules usually required a monthly training session with a follow up test question sessions per my work experience.
Knowing where to look and how to identify hazards is part of the training. Knowing that only qualified persons can deal with certain particular problems restrict direct attempts at problem solving responses. The safety procedures are in place for a reason and can be complicated to comply with.
April 2019-Colorado. Truck driver Rogel Mederos was driving 85 MPH in a semi truck when his brakes would fail him and he would crash causing a 28 car accident ...
The crash occurred on a part of the interstate where commercial vehicles are limited to 45 mph because the steep descent. Police said Aguilera-Mederos’ truck was traveling 85 mph when he slammed into the stopped after passing multiple runaway truck ramp signs.
The guy couldn’t read English.
Road signs? Who needs to read road signs!
Oh, and how and why do we have working-age adults in the US who don’t speak English?
It turns out the driver obtained his commercial drivers license by paying a bribe to someone in the Illinois Secretary of States office. The scandal took place while former Illinois governor George Ryan was the Secretary of State, and thus another one of our illustrious Governors was sent to prison.
I do miss that.
Don’t know how long you’ve been out of it, but you’re not missing much. It’s not the same as it was 10 - 15 years ago. I cannot wait to hang up the keys and never look back.
You Illinois types have a habit of your governors going to prison, don’t you?
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