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Non English Truckers Ticketed * USA - Feds look to tighten English law for truckers
Tuscaloosa,ALA,USA -AP, by JAY REEVES -18 July 2008: -- Manuel Castillo was driving a truck through Alabama hauling onions and left with a $500 ticket for something he didn't think he was doing: speaking English poorly... Castillo, who was stopped on his way back to California, said he knows federal law requires him to be able to converse in English with an officer but he thought his language skills were good enough to avoid a ticket... Still, Castillo said he plans to pay the maximum fine of $500 rather than return to Alabama to fight the ticket... "It just doesn't seem fair to be ticketed if I wasn't doing anything dangerous on the road," he said... Federal law requires that anyone with a commercial drivers license speak English well enough to talk with police. Authorities last year issued 25,230 tickets nationwide for violations. Now the federal government is trying to tighten the English requirement, saying the change is needed for safety reasons... The American Trucking Association, spokesman Clayton Boyce teamed with another industry organization, the Truckload Carrier Association, in recent years in a driver recruitment campaign that included trying to bring more Hispanics into trucking amid a driver shortage... Deborah Sparks, a spokeswoman for the Truckload Carrier group, said the driver shortage has eased now, she said, but language and driver recruitment could become an issue again... "Once the economy picks up we'll have a shortage again," she said... (Photo by Gary Kazanjian/AP - Truck driver Manuel Castillo, 50, talks about a ticket he received as he sat in his truck Monday, July 7, 2008 in Fowler, Calif. Castillo was driving a truck through Alabama hauling onions and left with a $500 ticket for something he didn't think he was doing: speaking English poorly. Federal law requires that anyone with a commercial drivers license speak English well enough to talk with police. Authorities last year issued 25,230 tickets nationwide for violations)Labels: non english truckers
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