Are English-Language Violations Associated With Unsafe Carriers?
Posted by FloridaColonel@reddit | Truckers | View on Reddit | 10 comments
"A recent executive order from President Trump requires the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to enforce federal English-language proficiency (ELP) regulations for truck drivers. This paper examines whether roadside inspections that find ELP violations have more non-ELP violations than inspections that do not find ELP violations and whether the carriers that have ELP violations have worse safety records than those without. There are three primary findings. First, there was a steady uptick in enforcement in June and July, but not everywhere. California effectively ignored the order, with state inspectors citing fewer ELP violations after the order was issued compared to before and issuing violations at 1/770 th the rate of Texas (for example). Second, inspections with ELP violations have more overall violations (exclusive of ELP violations) compared to inspections without ELP violations. The difference is substantial: 2.5 times the number of total violations relative to a comparison group, over 2 times the rate for the most egregious violations, and almost 3 times the rate for the most egregious driver violations. Third, carriers with ELP violations have bad safety scores, as measured by the DOT. This is especially true for the vehicle maintenance and unsafe driving categories, where the average carrier scores would often be in "alert" status as defined by the DOT."
Tank52086@reddit
Can someone translate this for me so I know what’s happening?
Ornery_Ads@reddit
According to the link, carriers that hire people who aren't fluent in English tend to have more violations than those who only hire drivers fluent in English.
OP and the writer seem to suggest that it's because people who don't speak English are incompetent at spotting violations while I suggest that it may be that the carriers who hire anyone won't care about maintenance.
FloridaColonel@reddit (OP)
I didn't say that sir. In fact all I did was quote the DATA. After all, trust the science eh?
This is part of the problem.
Here's a scientific study. No conclusions were drawn. You however have decided that I sit on some preconceived side you happen to be against and painted away with your own brush.
You drew your own conclusions. My own would be that a carrier that hires someone without some of the most basic requirements of the job is far more likely to be guilty of other violations.
The facts of the case are this: if you wanted to pull negligent, violation-riddled carriers off the road, one of the easiest ways to do this would be to see if their drivers had a basic grasp of the English language.
Ornery_Ads@reddit
I didn't say you did. You found an article on a hot button issue that supports a theory of "remove ELP deficient drivers." Through and through the article glosses over a plethora of data that would at least minimize the appearance of bias and/or impropriety.
Common phrase when using stuff like this, "Statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics."
Imagine you interviewed plane crash survivors and found that 80% of them reported that they paid attention to the flight attendant's safety briefing.
That would suggest that the safety briefing was pretty helpful in their survival, right? So "trust the science" and pay attention to the safety briefing" if you want to survive?
Problem is, you have no idea what the deceased would have reported. Maybe they would've reported 100% of them paid attention to the safety briefing, so the safer group was those who paid less attention.
No, I decided that it appears you are pushing an issue with very inadequate data.
Cool story bro. Why not just target the carriers with bad safety scores and leave it at that rather than going after one specific violation?
Why target ELP rather than going after, say, every carrier with a trailer abs light illuminated, or carriers with cracked windshields, or the carriers always getting overweight citations?
I could point to a handful of local daycab only carriers around me that are riddled with violations and have all generic white guys in their trucks.
Want to know some of the many issues with the article? Normalize the statistics against fleet sizes, fleet type, operation style, inspection location, etc.
How many of the ELP inspection issues are occurring in fleets of say 1-10 trucks vs 50-100 trucks?
If you want to compare apples to apples, compare similar fleet sizes.
What about flatbed vs dryvan?
Do dryvans tend to get more or fewer violations? What are the ELP deficient drivers typically running?
What are these federal inspections?
I have never heard of them, so maybe I'm just a lost puppy barking up the wrong tree, but 25% of ELP violations are by federal inspectors, while the highest state (WY) is around 7%? Then TX and AZ are 2nd and 3rd both at less than 5% of ELP violations?
Call in the big boys who are looking to write violations and act all surprised when you get more violations?
What about location itself?
I imagine that, on average, there are more ELP deficient drivers near the borders than elsewhere.
I bought a trailer out of Canada and hired a carrier to bring the trailer to me in the US. I met him at the first exit in the US, and he spoke almost no English at all. Great driver, has a full time job in his local language (French), but was definitely ELP deficient. He promptly went straight back to Canada after dropping the trailer. I would be shocked to see him driving down in Tennessee, for example, as he's a local driver in the Montreal area. So that begs the question, is it possible inspectors may be more strict in NY, VT, etc than in TN?
What about just at the damn borders?
Driver comes to the border to make a cross-border delivery and fails to communicate with the border agent proficiently in English, which triggers an inspection, and anyone knows they can always find a violation if they want to.
In order for this data to mean anything at all, you'd have to normalize it for all types of things.
Go pull one agency's data, maybe pick a state at random, go to Colorado and sort the data by carrier size, 1-5, 5-10, 10-25, 25-50, etc, then sort by daycabs vs sleepers, then sort by trailer type, then sort by random vs targeted. See if your correlation still stands.
Then you need to go pull each carriers inspection history. If every inspection they have is a myriad of violations, maybe, just maybe, its a bad carrier causing the problems, not a bad driver.
Tank52086@reddit
That’s English…. I don’t know what that says
easymacmac85@reddit
That and illegal drivers with "valid" cdls.
TruckerBiscuit@reddit
If a company is willing to cut corners in hiring ELP-deficient drivers it stands to reason they'd cut corners in other ways as well.
Ornery_Ads@reddit
So is it the fault of the ELP deficient drivers or the companies that hire them?
So many here are cheering that immigrants are bad and a scourge on the industry, then point at numbers like these as proof. I'm wondering if its the situation causing the result, not the other way. If they can only get hired with bad companies because of being an immigrant, then immigrant numbers would look bad. What if they were hired on with good companies? Would the trend follow them or stay with the bad company?
I am the epitome of generic white guy. Multiple generations born and raised in the US, don't speak other languages fluently, just some random shmo. My first class A job was with a company that had trucks with no heat, no ac, constant electrical issues, air leaks galore, driver door that doesn't open from the inside, etc. You could oos almost their entire fleet 50 different ways.
Sure, I complained about the broken trucks, but my choices were to drive them as is or don't work, don't make money.
I didn't have other job prospects, so I just went with what I had in front of me until I could make a change. Luckily, I was never inspected, but if I was, it would've been horrendous for my PSP, and the company's CSA. With that opportunity, I was able to move up and out and start my own operation. I pride myself on maintaining my trucks, but I can also understand how others can just stuck in a situation where they can't make upward changes.
TruckerBiscuit@reddit
Both are at fault for knowingly flouting the law.
Naborsx21@reddit
Wow who could have ever guessed?!?!
People used to make jokes about Swift but it's not even a competition now