The feds are on the move to place another brick in the wall preventing unqualified drivers from running up and down the highways – and they’re grabbing at a seldom-used enforcement standard to do it.
Monday, Aug. 10, will kick off a rare comment period on a proposal to formalize putting drivers out of service who cannot meet the English-language proficiency standards.
Now, most truckers are going to scratch their heads and wonder what makes this so different than the book full of out-of-service violations cops follow.
Most out-of-service criteria are discussed, voted on and added to the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Out-Of-Service Criteria. Another way of putting it, the cops who focus on commercial vehicle enforcement hold meetings to decide whether a driver violating a particular regulation gets a violation on their inspection report and sent on their way or if they are put out of service.
This move by the Federal Motor Carrier Administration would remove any doubt about whether a driver who cannot sufficiently read and speak English should be put out of service. And, if the rulemaking makes it through the proposal stage to a final rule, it would also prevent CVSA from scrapping the out-of-service requirement.
So how rare a move is this?
It’s not unicorn rare. There is precedent in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations that mandates an out-of-service order for non-compliance.
For example, regulation 392.5 Alcohol Prohibition has a federally mandated out-of-service order attached to it. The short version of the regs is that truckers cannot be under the influence of alcohol or use alcohol four hours before going on duty. Truckers who are busted violating the regulation are immediately placed out of service.
392.5(c): Any driver who is found to be in violation of the provisions of paragraph (a) or (b) of this section shall be placed out-of-service immediately for a period of 24 hours.
The inclusion in the regulations locks in the use of an out-of-service order when a violation takes place. That is key, because just as easily as CVSA can add more out-of-service orders to its roadside inspection criteria, the group has been able to opt out of issuing out-of-service orders on different regulations.
In fact, English-language proficiency is an example of such a move.
CVSA added the English-proficiency regulations to its out-of-service criteria in April 2005. That lasted about 10 years.
In his report to the OOIDA Board of Directors, OOIDA Director of Safety and Security Doug Morris said that English-language proficiency, which at that point was part of CVSA’s out-of-service criteria, resulted in 101,280 violations in 2014, but only 4,036 of those drivers were placed out of service.
Morris then told the board that having commercial vehicle drivers who don’t understand English poses a safety hazard.
“Unless they’re bilingual, you have drivers not understanding the commands of officers,” he said. “Message boards with warnings not to proceed, folks aren’t going to understand.”
Morris said CVSA also petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to have the whole regulation taken out of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, but the agency denied that request because “it’s still a problem that needs to be addressed.”
Undeterred, CVSA members voted to no longer put English-proficiency violators out of service, in spite of FMCSA keeping the regulation on the books.
What changed?
Change might be an overstatement. As more and more instances of drivers failing to meet the English-proficiency standard involved in fatal and serious crashes were reported, the cries for enforcement became almost deafening.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association led the charge in 2025 to shore up English-proficiency enforcement. As part of that pressure, the Association petitioned CVSA to add non-compliance back into the out-of-service criteria. CVSA not only granted the petition, but went a step further.
The group then, in turn, petitioned FMCSA to make the out-of-service orders part of the federal regulations.
That brings us to now.
What does the English proficiency proposal say?
In short, the agency is proposing that drivers who are operating outside of the U.S.-Mexico border zone and who cannot read or speak sufficiently to meet the English-language proficiency regulation would be placed out of service. The proposal does not state how long the out-of-service order is good for.
Now, drivers who can’t meet the standard and are only operating in the U.S.-Mexico border zone will not be placed out of service unless there is evidence the driver has or plans to operate outside of the border zone.
The proposal’s comment period for the public to weigh in will kick off on Monday, Aug. 10, when the proposal is officially published in the Federal Register. The proposal will be designated by docket number FMCSA-2026-0826. Comments are collected at Regulations.gov. LL
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