President Donald Trump and I will take measures to terminate the Obama era rules to treat English as a second language along the way.
The federal law is clear, a driver who cannot read or speak English sufficiently, our native language, and understand road signals is not qualified to drive a commercial motor vehicle in the United States. However, President Obama sacrificed driver’s security when he lowered the penalty for the offenders of the English domain rule along the way.
This language requirement is in force for obvious reasons. Drivers, special operators of heavy vehicles, must understand critical traffic information such as warnings for steep degrees or dangerous conditions. Commercial drivers must also communicate essential inspections or emergencies of effective duration and interact safely with the application of the law. This is not complicated. It is basic common sense. Americans should not be forced to share the way with illiterate trucks. Allowing someone to read a high signal or understand a police officer to operate trucks that weigh up to 80,000 pounds directly threaten the safety of their family and mine.
The Federal Motorcycle Security Administration (FMCSA) has documented cases of drivers whose inability to read our signs and speak our language contributed to fatal accidents. For example, in 2019, a semi -trailer pilot who could not speak English drove on a road full of people to almost 100 mph, blowing fits several signals that warned about steep degrees and dangerous curves. The driver finally hit multiple vehicles in a fatal accident, killing four and hurting others. In January of this year, a fatal collision in Western Virginia involved another driver who did not speak English who fled an accident. The driver who fled required an interpreter for research after the clash. That is unacceptable. The problem is simple: we are not presenting signals in any other language other than English. We are demanding that drivers speak and read English as a minimum requirement.
President Donald Trump shakes hand with the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy in the reporting room of the White House press on January 30, 2025 in Washington. (Photo AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
We will also take all the necessary measures so that our state partners and the commercial vehicle security alliance ensure that violations are treated once again as a serious security risk. This is more to enforce the law. It is about life and family prevention that alter tragedies, protect the integrity of our transport system and support the qualified American truckers and workers who play with the rules and keep our country in motion.
President Trump and I are committed to an aggressive deregulating agenda or cutting bureaucracy. We are cleaning the way for the United States to build a large and beautiful infrastructure again. But a regulation in which we are not committing ourselves is the basic requirement that commercial vehicle drivers are competent in English, our national language. This is a common sense standard that should never leave the bone. These standards finally help immigrants encouraging them to learn English, which is the language of the opportunity in the United States.
The United States is a nation with shared culture, values and traditions. Drivers who want to share our roads must share our language.
America First means first security.
Sean Duffy is the Secretary of Transportation of the United States in the Trump administration.
