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.
That’ll surely fix our surplus of truck drivers! /s
Good news! With the tarriffs throwing cold water on freight all across the US, we won’t need as many truck drivers!
…I really wish I was joking, but the fiance is OTR and freight has already slowed for him. Here’s an article from February that talks about how it was already slower than expected.
Ouch. Things are about to get real harsh before they get worse. I hope you are prepared.
It’s been speculated that Trump is doing this to prepare for the drop in cargo transport in the next few days. Me, I have doubts because nothing that Trump has said or done so far makes me believe that he or his sycophants are intellectually capable of that kind of rational planning. What do you think?
He has no goddamned clue what he’s doing. Whoever is speculating that is welcome to point to even one time where Trump prepared to keep people from economic harm in such a fashion, but I’ve only ever seen him walk things back, not actually insulate someone from harm.
So cops pulling people over for a Language check?
This is just for show
Fuck you shoresey
Fuck you, T00l_shed! Your mom wants me so bad she said she’d do anything so I got her walking around with my phone playing my Pokémon Go.
Give your balls a tug, tit-fucker
Tell your mom to stop faking jellyfish stings, I’m not going to pee on her
Shut up shorsey
I keep on thinking of the mad tv skit with the woman who says she can’t understand people with accents.
Ah yes, those unqualified drivers that are being hired as professional truck drivers. It’s their lack of English skills that are the problem.
How was their totally legitimate and law abiding employer supposed to know about their lack of ability or driving licence? They are the real victims here, being forced to hire them and all.
ah, there’s the old rub. how many of trucking companies are going to be held accountable for hiring them? i’d wager it’s just about as many farmers that get fucked for hiring lettuce pickers. oh yeah, how’s that lettuce picking going now?
So, they will arrest people for not obeying an executive order that, and IANAL, has no basis in law? How will they be identifying these drivers? What is the justification for pulling them over?
If they’re brown, pull 'em over.
If you have to take off your sunglasses to understand their accent, arrest 'em
-From the official executive order.
It does seem like an excuse to call ICE.
Combine with ignoring due process, and it looks like a way to get at immigrants.
No, they’ll just add it as a requirement to do any work with federal jobs or something.
The executive office in the us has so many levers of power it can pull that they don’t really need laws anymore.
“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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Meanwhile how many accidents are caused by dumb bitches on their phones?
Seems more and more like every headline could be: Senile Old Man Yells at the Sky*.
*with the authority of the US government.
Oof that will crash the trucking industry.
It was going to mostly crash anyway, when the ships stop coming next week, due to the tariffs.
How so?
I’m not sure how you could possibly get a CDL without speaking English. Also trucking is a good way to lose money.
Trucking is the quickest way to make $100k/year. It ain’t easy hours but demand for drivers is insanely high. My company at one point was offering $15k signing bonus for drivers.
I personally know at least a dozen that I work with daily at work that do not have any English fluency whatsoever.
Actually it’s helped my Spanish skills lol
I had no idea that was possible
I dunno how they did it. They’re third party contract drivers.
But we do live in a very Spanish-speaking part of the country so it was probably as easy as finding a friendly enough bi-lingual examiner at the DMV.
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.
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 “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.
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.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin
So the party of small government is going to administer english tests to truck drivers? maybe create some kind of language registry with proficiency levels? sounds kinda woke
There is already a federal clearing house for DoT drivers, this is for criminal checks and drug tests. They would just put it there.
I hate to be “that guy” … but non English speakers on the road is kind of an issue.
I’m sorry, but the whole thing is ridiculous. Surely you are aware that there are countries (eg your neighbour to the north) that have more than one official language. As far as i know, only one city in Canada has bilingual signage, yet Canadians manage to drive safely all over the country without necessarily having proficiency in both languages. The european union has ??? languages and yet somehow manages to have safe roads. this is all part of trump’s pandering to the racist and xenophobic idiots who comprise his base.
I have to agree with @Wilco@lemm.ee, though the issue is not really while going down the road.
Language barriers become an issue at pickups, drop offs, truck stops, weigh stations and anywhere else where you might need to follow a precise set of oddball instructions.
So, nothing to do with road safety.
Commerical driving licenses already require English proficiency so this is a non-issue. Now ask yourself why this particular administration is trying to “solve” a non-issue via executive order and not an act of Congress. Hint: It’s a power grab that will be used to the detriment of minorities.
There was a video on ?imgur? in the past couple days, I didn’t know if it was real. Guy says he was a truck driver and had stopped at a weigh station. He said they asked if he could read and write English; he said yes. They gave him a piece of paper to read, which he did; they then told him to write those words down on another piece of paper, which was filled with identical words in various handwritings. He said he saw a bunch of people off to the side in handcuffs, and said that if you couldn’t speak or write English, you had to pay a $5000 “fine” on the spot, and that if you couldn’t pay, you were arrested on the spot and your driving license immediately suspended. There was some condition (I don’t remember what it was) where the trucking company might also have to pay a $10000 “fine”.
The comments discussion pointed out that, if they had had $5000 to pay the “fine”, it likely would’ve been taken in civil forfeiture. There was also a robust discussion on whether this was real or not, trying to find other sources, which were slim and primarily referenced questionable sources.
Running the entire economy via a central planning committee is exactly the sort of right-wing free market the GOP voters wanted. I guess? Up is down. The past is alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
There’s the double-think we’ve all come to know and love. Double plus good, party member
The party of states rights (in areas they’re losing federally) makes yet another federal commandment in areas they want to gain ground on
Think we are way past them being small government. They are the party of HUGE government. They want to regulate how you speak, to whom you speak, where you speak, what your name is allowed to be, what people are allowed to call you, where you are allowed to use the bathroom, whether or not you can access healthcare, how you pay for that healthcare, what you are allowed to eat, who you purchase things from, what medications you are allowed to be prescribed and monitor whether or not you are ovulating.
Executive orders are not laws. He can direct how the law in enforced, but he can’t just unilaterally define new laws
I keep seeing comments from people pretending that the way it is meant to be is the way it is. Trump has said the law is what he says. There is no effective defense against him declaring laws if there is no enforcement. He has defied judges orders and will continue to do so. The EOs are laws because they are being followed and nobody is stopping them.
Saying he can’t do that comes across like a right wing talking point. Trying to convince people that he can’t do what he is clearly doing, so those who are opposed will just sit around thinking the natural order will take care of it.
And it’s working. Sure there have been some protests. But no where the amount needed to make a change. Trump is now a dictator, and far too many Americans are ok with it, directly and passively.
Actually there have been some massive protests against all this BS Trump has done. The media is just complicit and basically none of these protests have been covered in any mainstream outlets. The protests ARE there but if you are not driving by them on the way to work you probably do not even know about them. Thanks MSM~!@
Many laws are written to give the executive branch leeway in defining the details of how a law is to be implemented. This makes sense, assuming everyone is acting in good faith; technologies, science, standards, and best practices all evolve over time.
Laws are usually written in a way to ensure Congressional oversight, to prevent the executive either intentionally or accidentally from subverting their will. But with a treasonous President and a complicit Congress, here we are… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good thing we won’t need so many of those when supply chains dry up from tariffs!
Won’t this disqualify half his illiterate base
to be fair it’s about SPEAKING english, not READING english…
Word history!
1784, a colloquial American English alteration of darnation (itself a minced oath in place of damnation), influenced by tarnal (1790), a mild profanity, clipped from phrase by the Eternal (God), for which see eternal.
Neat … never did think about where the word ‘tarnation’ came from … heard it many times and just thought it was a made up nonsense word … never thought it had an actual history like that. Thanks!
okay, you’ve got to check out RobWords and Words Unraveled. i’m not usually one to plug youtube channels, but i think you’d really like them. i suggest you check out words unraveled first - just because it’s a lot of fun and jess (his co-host) adds a lot and makes him blush.
You are a monster … I spend hours watching furniture and small engine restoration videos … documentaries and history … now you’ve given me a new branch of content to watch.
I can both simultaneously thank you and curse for this information. Regardless, I’m happy to have met you.
The point stands
i don’t see why you might think i disagree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The same people who said they would remove big government that tries to control everything and everyone
oh, they still want total control… but only of those deemed ‘unworthy’. the ‘big’ government they want to get rid of is only the bits that watch what they (the rich fucks and their companies) do and might enforce laws that they break.
