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.
yet another thing that has no legal standing and only exists to make the idiots think trump is accomplishing something
Executive orders are not laws. He can direct how the law in enforced, but he can’t just unilaterally define new laws
That’ll help the shortage of drivers for sure 🙄
So if you happen to have a thicc Indian accent you need a second guy with you to translate English to English. Gotcha
I keep on thinking of the mad tv skit with the woman who says she can’t understand people with accents.
I guess he’s not wrong
However this is useless as you need to speak English to get a commercial license
Perfect, he gets to make a big fuss for the racists, but doesn’t actually have to change anything. That way there’s less risk of breaking anything, and he’s probably looking for a win right now.
It’s a bit like decreeing that all English week day names must henceforth end in the letter ‘y’. It’s low risk, makes certain people think you’re busy taking action, and leaves everyone else wondering what you’re up to with this, taking some of the heat off of other issues.
People on both sides talk about how he’s all powerful but the courts still have more authority. This whole thing proves it
That is not correct. There are many CDL drivers who only speak Spanish. If you’re talking about the test, that’s a joke.
Do they offer Spanish CDL classes?
Also how do they read the sign
That’ll surely fix our surplus of truck drivers! /s
This is already a Commercial Driver’s License requirement. What is the specific issue here?
“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
Can’t pull someone for “driving while brown”, but you can pull someone over for “driving while not speaking English, which I just concluded from you being brown”
You don’t need to speak English to know turn left and stop.
“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.
Meanwhile how many accidents are caused by dumb bitches on their phones?
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.
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
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.
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
This is just an excuse for ICE to pull people over. And since they’re a part of the executive branch, they care less about due process and laws.
Exactly.
Won’t this disqualify half his illiterate base
to be fair it’s about SPEAKING english, not READING english…
The point stands
i don’t see why you might think i disagree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
US economy crashing again in 3…2…1…
again
Still
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
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
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.
Edit: found the video, which apparently originated on Xitter, and was originally posted last month (I only saw it a day or so ago).
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.
The party of states rights (in areas they’re losing federally) makes yet another federal commandment in areas they want to gain ground on
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.
