It’s easy to see why President Trump wants to ban illegals from driving tractor-trailer trucks.
If you can’t speak English you can’t read signs.
And you can’t communicate with others on the road.
It’s that simple.
“Heck,” you say, “what’s the big deal not reading a sign or not speaking English?”
If a guy driving a 3,000-pound, 10-foot-long car can’t read signs, he’s a potential danger.
[RELATED: Illegal Alien Driving on Maine Permit Hits, Kills Pedestrian in Lewiston]
If a guy driving a 50,000-pound, 70-foot-long truck can’t read signs, he’s a potential killer.
Having personally driven the latter for 20 years, thankfully with no accidents, let me tell you how safe big trucks can be.
But even if statistically they aren’t necessarily responsible for a proportionately higher number of deaths compared to miles, they still terrify people who drive cars just because of their sheer size.
Because of that, commercial truckers need to be sensitive to the fears of people driving cars. And sensitivity isn’t translatable from English if you can’t speak English or understand it.
Big-rig drivers often have to intuit what drivers of smaller vehicles are thinking, or thinking of doing.
Truckers foreign to American culture – and ignorant of the English word “fear” – are a menace.
If a guy driving 25 tons of bottled water from Poland Spring to Buffalo can’t read, then what else can’t he do?
Does he understand that in his adopted country we respect others’ boundaries, the difference between ”feeling safe” and “feeling scared?”
If a terrified woman being held hostage in the car next to him is trying to communicate “help me” to him does he have any clue?
If a cop tells him the road is too icy for tractor-trailers and that he needs to immediately park it, does he understand what he’s just been told?
If a fellow trucker at a fuel depot notices his illegally bald tires does he have any idea what the word bald means?
Heck, does he know what illegal means?
If he can’t read English how does he study for the lengthy and very detailed commercial-driver’s exam?
And then how does he pass it?
That’s the other good reason for you no speak the English, you no take the test and you no drive a tractor-trailer in the America.
Trump’s also cracking down on shady truck-driving “schools” that “prepare” illegals how to “pass” the state exam.
While we’re at it, a shout out to all the dedicated, hardworking highway cops who keep truckers safe, especially in blizzards when tractor-trailer trucks can be virtually uncontrollable.
God knows their jobs are dangerous enough without having to deal with big-rig drivers who can’t speak English.
I personally can attest to at least once when an incredibly alert state cop saved my bacon when in the middle of a frigid winter night, he, driving alongside me on a high-speed toll road, noticed a problem with my truck that I wasn’t aware of. He pulled me over to let me know – and then he even helped me solve it.
If I didn’t speak English I’d have had no idea what he was talking about to begin with.
And then I wouldn’t have been able to actually say “thank you so much” in words he could appreciate.
Keep English in the driver’s seat – and the foreign tongues at the border.
