English proficiency voted into out-of-service criteria by CVSA

Prompted by an OOIDA petition that was followed by a presidential executive order, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance voted to make a lack of English proficiency part of the out-of-service criteria for truckers and to shore up CDL testing standards.

Citing highway safety, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association petitioned the Alliance on March 12 to make non-compliance with the English-proficiency regulation, 391.11(b)(2), part of the out-of-service criteria. It was previously an out-of-service violation from 2005 until 2015, when CVSA voted to remove it from the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria.

The Alliance met this week in New Orleans, and things really heated up the afternoon of Monday, April 28, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for enforcement of the English-proficiency regulation.

Following a March 1 executive order declaring English the official language of the United States, this week’s executive order calls for upholding English-proficiency requirements as outlined in 391.11(b)(2). In order to accomplish this, the order also directs FMCSA to work with “the relevant entities responsible for establishing the out-of-service criteria,” meaning CVSA.

The order gave a 60-day deadline for affected parties and agencies to get to work.

On Tuesday, April 29, the Driver and Traffic Committee voted to recommend the CVSA Executive Committee make non-compliance with the English-proficiency requirement an out-of-service violation.

Because of Trump’s executive order, the Driver and Traffic Committee also voted to recommend that the Executive Committee petition the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to change 391.11(b)(2) to specifically state lack of English proficiency is an out-of-service violation, similar to how 392.5 is structured.

The recommendation was a direct result of Trump’s executive order.

Additionally, the Driver and Traffic Committee also recommended that the Executive Committee petition FMCSA to require harmonization of CDL testing in the English language.

At the heart of that request is the current ability of states to give the written portions of the CDL exams in languages other than English. In its recommendation to the Executive Committee, the Driver and Traffic committee noted that if drivers take the test in a language other than English and are given a CDL, “they are immediately faced with an (out-of-service) condition for driver qualifications because they do not speak English.”

The Executive Committee adopted all three recommendations on Thursday, May 1.

OOIDA support

This issue has always been about safety in the eyes of OOIDA.

“This isn’t about where someone’s from – it’s about safety. Your safety. My safety. Everyone’s safety,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a video about OOIDA’s stance. “If you can’t communicate with law enforcement or read a road sign, you’re creating a dangerous situation on the highway.”

The fact that the regulation has been on the books since 1936 proves it’s been a safety concern for a long time.

“Of course, we are pleased to see CVSA take these very commonsense and practical steps to getting control of a situation that all highway users face,” Spencer said following the final votes adopting the recommendations.

“This has never been about where someone is from; this has been about safety,” he added. “Turning a blind eye to enforcement for whatever the reason was never the right answer. Now, not only do we have English proficiency back in the out-of-service criteria, CVSA is smartly pointing at the CDL licensing process. It is the gateway for non-compliant drivers to obtain CDLs, and it needs to be shut down. The training and testing required to get a CDL should be comprehensive and thorough enough to assure all that this driver has what it takes to operate safely.”

Spencer also said OOIDA is committed to backing CVSA’s efforts to shut down loopholes that allow unsafe drivers on the road and to holding FMCSA and the DOT accountable for their roles in highway safety.

Why did it start with CVSA?

Many may wonder why this process started with CVSA.

It is not commonly understood how enforcement of regulations is determined. While FMCSA sets the regulations, it hands over to CVSA the responsibility to enforce most of them and determine whether vehicles or drivers will be put out of service for violating them.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations states (with emphasis added):

Out-of-service order means a declaration by an authorized enforcement officer of a Federal, State, Canadian, Mexican, or local jurisdiction that a driver, a commercial motor vehicle, or a motor carrier operation is out of service pursuant to 49 CFR 386.72, 392.5, 392.9a, 395.13, or 396.9, or compatible laws, or the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria.

CVSA is the keeper of the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria. At workshops, its members review regulations and existing out-of-service criteria to determine worth.

With the exception of five specific regulations, CVSA determines out-of-service criteria for all other regulations.

English proficiency used to be an out-of-service violation.

Starting in 2005, CVSA considered non-compliance with the regulation an out-of-service violation. The problem was that there weren’t a lot of out-of-service orders handed out.

The English-proficiency regulation, which was then enforced as 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.

Rather than start issuing more out-of-service orders, CVSA voted in 2015 to drop the enforcement of the English-proficiency regulation from the out-of-service criteria.

So, this meeting was returning English-proficiency non-compliance to the out-of-service criteria by the group tasked with holding the keys to the out-of-service criteria.

Next steps

During the vote, a secondary motion was offered and accepted to invoke the emergency clause to have it put into the out-of-service criteria within 60 days, setting an implementation date of June 25.

As for the petitions, there will be some wait-and-see-what-happens once they are officially presented to the Department of Transportation and FMCSA.

“There’s more work to be done on this issue,” Spencer said. “But what we have today is a really, really good first step in the right direction.” LL