Nearly 7,000 commercial truck driving training schools are at risk of losing their accreditation in the latest example of the Trump administration’s investigations into the trucking industry. Those schools represent almost half of all training schools in the U.S.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced in early December that it will revoke the accreditation of 3,000 schools and trainers unless they can meet federal requirements within 30 days. It also warned 4,000 more schools that they could face similar treatment.
“We are reigning in illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a press release.
No names were released, but the schools make up more than 40% of the 16,000 authorized trainers in the U.S. The DOT has accused these schools and trainers of falsifying or altering training data, failing to meet required curriculum standards and instructor qualifications, and failing to maintain accurate documentation.
The crackdown seems just another move from the administration to weed out illegal immigrants and immigrant drivers, much like the recent revocation of licenses for non-domiciled commercial driver licenses (CDLs) as well as new English-language proficiency requirements.
The DOT has proposed significant new restrictions on immigrants seeking a CDL, though in recent days a federal appeals court placed a stay on those restrictions. The introduction of stricter regulations on drivers coincided with several deadly crashes involving foreign-born truckers — including fatal crashes in Florida and California.
In October, a multi-vehicle crash on the I-10 Freeway in Southern California was caused by a 21-year-old semi-truck driver, Jashanpreet Singh, who is from India and was in the U.S. illegally. The crash, which killed three people, involved him allegedly being under the influence of drugs, but later toxicology reports indicated he was not drunk or on drugs.
Duffy claims the restrictions are urgently needed because there are too many foreign-born truck drivers who don’t know the rules of the road and don’t speak English proficiently.
The DOT further claims that a “catastrophic pattern of states issuing licenses illegally to foreign drivers” has led to “horrific, fatal crashes caused by non-domiciled drivers.” The only problem with those statements is that the DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has previously released data indicating there’s no evidence of a relationship between a CDL’s nation of domicile and safety issues on U.S. highways.
