MAGA fans are rejoicing on social media in favor of President Donald Trump’s plan to sign an executive order requiring commercial truck drivers to speak English.
Breitbart News reported that Trump would sign the order Monday evening because “President Trump believes that English is a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers.” Last month, Trump designated English as “the official language of the United States.”
“This is such a big deal! So grateful for this, the roads will be much safer. Like many, I have seen many accidents or near accidents from unqualified drivers,” posted @coffeegirlvegas.
Not sure about other states, but in mine, the ability to read and understand English is a requirement for getting a license…
Now you could make an argument that’s not the same as speaking English, and my rebuttal is “should we ban mute, or speech-impared people from getting a CDL”?
, and my rebuttal is “should we ban mute, or speech-impared people from getting a CDL”?
Well those people are already Undesirables under the rule of el trumpo, so their answer is… yeah?
I’m not really clear how they would even enforce this. They don’t have a database or standard test for speaking english.
FBI: “Do you speak english?”
Driver: “Sí señor. Aber ich lerne auch Deutsch.”
FBI: “Fatastich. Guten Abend.”
Trump can’t even speak English.
Like many, I have seen many accidents or near accidents from unqualified drivers
Can anyone explain how knowing English would reduce traffic accidents? Is it because of detour signs?
In the US, traffic signs with crucial information are often written in only English text, no symbols, pictograms or anything else that could make it possible to guess what the sign is saying without being able to read English.
Can you please elaborate with some examples if possible? I’m trying to picture this from highways and roadways here in Florida, but I am struggling to get your gist. I will look again on the way home tonight. However I am not a trucker or cdl so I might be oblivious to some.
This video, Why US Signs Look Different Than The Rest Of The World’s, contains a lot of examples of such US road signs that depend on English text to convey their message:
Wow, that video conveys exactly the difference, thanks. Seems like a USA stubbornness thing, akin to imperial vs metric system, oy vey.
As always another trump “policy” that’ll backfire spectacularly
Probably won’t matter much. No ships means nothing to haul
If it were enforced, yes. But let’s be real.
Good thing we won’t need so many of those when supply chains dry up from tariffs!
Breitbart News reported that
“News”
Who the fuck is supposed to drive the trucks then? I live in (upstate) New York and it seems like even up there a significant population of Mexican truck drivers.
Here, if they don’t speak English, they are almost all Eastern European or Indian. Lots of Russian, Belarusian, Chechen, etc
How does being Mexican mean you don’t speak English? Have you never met a bilingual person in your life?
If you ever followed American politics throughout history, you can see how this can easily be abused. Before, you had to take a test to determine if you were smart enough to vote. The test was the same for both whites and minorities, but it was graded differently depending on your race.
What defines “speaking English”?. Is it a basic level, being able to read road signs or being able to speak to dispatch, the loading crew, or ems at a fundamental level? Or is it college level? Will you even be tested if you’re white?
With trumps many many anti-minority policies and rhetoric, and his abuse of ice, as well as setting up black sites and selling people to the El Salvadoran concentration camp, it’s hard not to think that this will be abused in some way. This is in no way a pro-English law. This is an anti-minority law.
However, cause of how dot and cdls are set up now, I doubt that much will come out of it tbh
I don’t think I said they don’t speak English. It’s usually pretty broken in my experience. They’re usually just guys who work long hours at a hard job.
I’ve actually seen deliveries from all sorts of immigrant drivers, Ukrainian stands out.
I have a CDL, Class A with X endorsement.
This changes nothing. CDL manuals, exams, and paperwork are all in English. What I think Trump thinks he’s doing is banning Mexicans from driving trucks in the US, but this is controlled by a reciprocity agreement between the US and Mexico. Surprise, Mexicans don’t have to take American exams for a CDL when they can have a license issued by the Mexican government.
Basically all this is is white supremacist virtue signaling.
Nah you’re still thinking about it within the the UN/long peace legal framework. They can just do a decree that says no mexicans, and their extrajudidical thugs will take the signal to harass and murder truck drivers.
B-but that’s illegal ☝️🤓
Are you going to stop them?
Are you going to stop them?
Truck drivers aren’t the most progressive, but if they see fellow drivers getting harassed/attacked by four wheelers you can bet your ass they’re gonna go Mad Max on their asses for that
I hope so 🙏
I would love to see the US go a month without Mexican truck drivers. The UK pulled the same stunt with Polish truck drivers. People were rejoicing at empty shelves and overflowing garbage bins.
Which will be ignored like the rest of his Executive Orders that don’t actually have anything to do with the Executive.
*sniff sniff*
Smells like your food is about to cost even more.
This is an unpresidented act
“This is such a big deal! So grateful for this, the roads will be much safer. Like many, I have seen many accidents or near accidents from unqualified drivers,” posted @coffeegirlvegas.
Oh yea? You and many others have witnessed many accidents that were due to a truck driver’s inability to speak English?
You dumb bitch.
It’s already part of the federal commercial driver regulations too… so no. No they have not. The most they’ve seen is someone with a heavy accent and maybe broken English.
I’m willing to bet the most they’ve seen is some accidents involving trucks, with no knowledge of what happened or who was driving.
It’s already part of the federal commercial driver regulations too
If it is already part of the rules, what makes this EO a bad thing? Sounds like it’s just enforcing a status-quo that nobody had an issue with.
“Interpreters are prohibited during the administration of skills tests. Applicants must be able to understand and respond to verbal commands and instructions in English by a skills test examiner.” CDL Standards
What’s bad about performative actions in the form of executive orders applying rules to situations the president has clearly demonstrated he doesn’t understand?
From my personal experience the bigotry towards non white non male folks in the industry can be pretty extreme, so off the very top of my head I can think of several ways a bombastic EO could inflame that worse. Not to mention I’d like my government to focus on fixing shit instead of meaningless performative bullshit
If it is already part of the rules, what makes this EO a bad thing?
It’s a power grab by the executive that will be used to, for example, harass minorities driving on the street. If it’s already part of the rules then it doesn’t need an executive order.
Because this EO isn’t about speaking English for road safety. The same way locking trans people out of bathrooms isn’t about protecting women. Or how deporting green card holders and naturalised citizens isn’t about US Security.
There are so many examples of this from the last 100 days. The US is honestly a lost cause at this point.
That’s one of the infuriating things about these people. They’ll just make up BS that makes Trump seem reasonable. Trump does this English only thing, and now suddenly non-english truck drivers causing accidents is a thing, something that’s been a problem all along and thank Jesus he’s finally fixing it. Even though this was never actually a real issue that anyone even imagined before today.
The number of truck drivers whos first language wasn’t English who made deliveries for the distributer I worked with recently was high. The number of times that speaking to them came into the scope of their job was 0. They pulled up, backed a truck up at 3:30am once a week and handed us an invoice. They take a nap while we unloaded the back, then they left. Driving through the night doesn’t require you to speak, it requires you to be awake and have decent eyesight/perception. They could have been missing their left leg for all we cared. Trucking is like clock work. If you want groceries with the freshest dates in stores when they open, you need as many people willing to drive overnight and early morning workers to get them from the distributors to the stores and on the shelves before anyone wants to wake up.
Being able to read English would be important, not so much speaking it.
Being able to identify traffic signs would be enough.
You don’t actually need to be able to read, just memorize what the writing on a dozen-or-so signs means.
Meanwhile how many accidents are caused by dumb bitches on their phones?
And enforcement was relaxed under Obama
I read comments like this and all I can feel is astonishment that anyone’s life is so empty that they can dedicate time to caring about this.
Like, it sounds made up, but honestly whether true or not… like, who cares? It’s so trivial and life has so much to offer. This comment is the first and last time I’ll ever think about this.
Well, it’s fact. Some truckers and trucker’s groups have theorized that the increase in CDL involved accidents since the relaxing of this rule are caused instead of simply correlated.
I actually agree with enforcing rules like this so even though trump’s an asshole, this one might improve safety.
I think it would be great if you can list some credible source before asserting a fact.
Also I have a question, why do truck drivers speaking English makes the road more safe? As long as they understand the required knowledge, I don’t see the language they speak matters in terms of safety, but that could just be my lack of understanding in this area.
Doesn’t the US have a shitton of unstandardized road signs which are just words?
I feel like you have to have some English proficiency to understand them.
If all those signs were in Chinese, it would take a commercial truck driver about a week to memorize the writing for each and learn what it means.
You don’t need to speak the language for that.and if they were in Spanish, you may not even need a whole day.
But the inconsistency is the problem.
Take a look at the top signs about driving on the shoulder. Who is to say there aren’t twenty more variations?
Maybe a couple of
“Driving on shoulder mandatory”
“Trucks on shoulder only”
“Passing on shoulder permitted”
“$100 fine for driving on shoulder”
“Keep shoulder clear”
“No trucks allowed on shoulder”
There doesn’t seem to be any standard. It’s just text.
It’s in the news?
Quickest example I can come up with:
“Winter conditions ahead, reduce speed now.”
You know what also happened in 2016? They revised the definition of “large truck” to include 329 more vehicles. By increasing the sample size you’re going to see more accidents. Common cause of accidents is fatigue from drivers working too many hours. That gets better if there’s less drivers and they have to know English though right?
The article states: “Republican Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming … [states] a consistent rise in fatal truck crashes since its implementation.”
Whereas your statement is “[Requiring truck driver to speak English improves safety] is a fact”.
I am not saying what you said is necessarily wrong or the policy is necessarily harmful; but I feel we probably need more proof than “a republican representative said so”, to assert a certain statement as “a fact”.
BTW, neither you nor the news article provided the relevant data, which IMHO doesn’t really inspire confidence in your argument. Let alone all the potiential confounding variable others have mentioned.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Removed by mod
Is there any such requirement for ships in international waters?
English seems a bit too narrow, but I could see one of maybe 10 languages being a requirement (English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese, etc)
Or perhaps, like the UN requires, at least three on this list.
Not sure about ocean shipping, but English is the standard language for Air Traffic Control. Specifically, Aviation English, but that came about through a specific need. The dangers of an air traffic accident are much higher, the training requirements for an air traffic controller or pilot already more involved then a truck driver, and English being the most spoken language in the word, when you include second and third languages, made English being the standard the most logical. I don’t know Aviation English, but I would assume it strips out any regional slag or local idioms.
Truck drivers don’t need a common language because traffic signage is designed to be readable without knowing being fluent in the language. If you can read the numbers and memorize what the sign shapes mean, you’re fine. If something goes wrong, you can pull off to the side. Something you can’t just do in an airplane.
yet another thing that has no legal standing and only exists to make the idiots think trump is accomplishing something
