U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) leadership says that thousands of truck drivers have been sidelined for English Language Proficiency (ELP) violations so far this year.
USDOT Sidelines Thousands Of Commercial Vehicle Drivers For Language-Related Violations
On October 30, 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy cited real-time violation data in reporting that 7,248 drivers have been placed out-of service for failure to meet federal ELP standards as of October 2025.
“The U.S. Department of Transportation requires commercial truck drivers to speak and understand English to operate a big rig – or they will be taken out-of-service,” Duffy said.
According to a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) database that aggregates roadside inspection violation data from across the country, 5,006 ELP out-of-service violations have been recorded so far this year.
In late July 2025, Duffy reported that “roughly” 1,500 drivers had been placed out-of-service for ELP violations.
Since I took action to enforce language proficiency requirements for truckers, our state partners have put roughly 1,500 unqualified drivers out of service. That’s what I call results!
If you can’t read or speak our national language — ENGLISH — we won’t let your truck endanger… https://t.co/TKPcn60ic2
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) July 30, 2025
Federal Push For Increased ELP Enforcement Now Being Felt
English language requirements for truck drivers have become a hot-button issue in the wake of an August 2025 triple fatality crash on the Florida Turnpike involving truck driver Harjinder Singh. The ability of Singh to speak English sufficiently to meet FMCSA requirements has been called into question since the crash.
Non-compliance with existing federal regulations requiring ELP for commercial vehicle drivers officially became an out-of-service violation again as of June 25, 2025, following a White House Executive Order (EO) demanding increased enforcement of federal English-language requirements for truck drivers.
The EO called for the repeal of a 2016 FMCSA memo that directed law enforcement not to place truck drivers out-of-service for ELP violations. In compliance with the White House EO, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) added English proficiency to the agency’s North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria on June 25.
In order to avoid an out-of-service order, drivers must be able to read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.