Hofer Hagan LLP

The US Department of Transportation announced that it is shutting down hundreds of truck driving schools because they are failing to meet safety standards in their training. I have mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand, nobody favors putting unsafe drivers on the road. On the other hand, if you go to far, you may limit the supply of the drivers needed to get our goods from place to place.

In previous years we represented some former students who were being sued by Driver Solutions, a driving school with operations in our home town of Indianapolis. Those cases were our introduction to systematic issues in truck driver training in the US that were not limited to Driver Solutions. (For the most part we were able to resolve these cases on a mutually agreeable basis, and we are no longer involved in these cases.) I am not qualified to evaluate the training standards because I am not a truck driver. What we were dealing with were issues arising out of what are, in my opinion, unfair contracts, contracts which people felt pressured to sign because lack of economic opportunity were driving them to desperation. One-sided contracts are endemic to the industry, and Driver Solutions' contracts are probably not the worst.

Students sign the one-sided contracts because people going to truck driving schools usually come from economically disadvantaged background, and they have very little money to spend on education. Truck Driving schools subsidized by trucking companies end up locking new drivers into contracts driving for economically marginal wages after graduation.

I think we need to have safety standards for truck driving schools. I think there should be more consumer protection on the contracts, and affordable loans should be more available for students going to truck driving schools.

We also have to recognize that we are probably training the last (large) generation of long-haul truck drivers. Automotive companies are not investing billions of dollars in self-driving technology just so you don't have to put your hands on the wheel when you go to the grocery store. The real payoff is self-driving semis. All of the people who have made their living as truck drivers will suddenly find their expertise is not as valuable. We have to figure out how to take care of these people and give them a fresh start.

Hundreds Of Driving Schools Must Close Over Safety Failures, Transportation Dept. Says Investigators discovered that the schools employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues.

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