Transportation Department says more than 550 driving schools should close over safety failures

More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department plans to announce Wednesday.

This is the Transportation Department’s latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike the previous action last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest action is focused on active schools with significant shortcomings that inspectors identified in 1,426 site visits.

The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who shouldn’t have qualified for them ever since a truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana earlier this month that killed four, have only added to the concerns.

Duffy said 448 schools that failed to meet basic safety standards. Inspectors found issues like employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students’ skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned that inspectors were planning to visit.

“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel,” Duffy said.