I think most people can agree that having someone behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck who can’t read warnings on electronic highway signs or understand directions from a law enforcement officer isn’t a good recipe for safety.
Of course, we need to take a hard look at how someone without English-proficiency skills is getting a CDL in the first place. However, we also need to scrutinize the motor carriers who are handing the keys over to someone who is being placed in a position to fail.
One might guess that a trucking company willing to do so may also look the other way when it comes to plenty of other safety regulations. According to research from a professor at the University of Tennessee, that guess would be correct.
A study released on Oct. 1 titled, “Are English-Language Violations Associated with Unsafe Carriers,” found that motor carriers with English-proficiency violations have received poor safety scores from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“The safety ratings of the carriers with ELP violations were considerably worse on average than carriers without ELP violations,” University of Tennessee associate professor Alex Scott wrote in the study.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Safety Measurement System assigns scores to various safety categories, such as vehicle maintenance, unsafe driving and hours-of-service compliance. In each category, a score of zero indicates the best performance.
The results are nothing short of alarming, as trucking companies with English-proficiency violations (6.23) earned scores for unsafe driving that were nearly five times worse than motor carriers without an ELP violation (1.32).
Even more, carriers with English-proficiency violations averaged a 9.06 vehicle maintenance score while all other carriers averaged a 1.32. Hours-of-service violations were nearly twice as prevalent with a score of 0.71 compared to 0.42.
“Inspections with ELP violations have much higher rates of overall violations compared to inspections without ELP violations, including elevated rates of the most egregious violations,” the study stated.
The researchers note that the findings of the study do not suggest that a lack of English proficiency cause these violations or poor carrier safety scores.
Instead, it may be a reflection on carriers who are willing to cut corners at the cost of safety.
“It is possible that non-English-speaking drivers are taken advantage of by unscrupulous carriers and managers at those carriers,” the study concluded. “It is possible that unsafe carriers hire drivers who cannot speak English and then push them to perform unsafely. If that is the case, then actions should be taken to protect drivers from those management practices.” LL
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