WATCH: Transportation Secretary Duffy announces commercial driver’s license tests in English only

All truckers and truckers will have to take commercial driver’s license tests in English as the Trump administration expands its aggressive campaign to improve safety in the industry and keep unqualified drivers off the road.

Watch Transport Minister Sean Duffy’s press conference in the video player above.

Duffy announced the latest efforts Friday to make sure drivers understand English well enough to read road signs and communicate with law enforcement officers. Florida has already begun administering its tests in English.

Read more: The Department of Transport says more than 550 driving schools must close due to safety failures

Currently, many states allow drivers to take their licensing tests in other languages ​​even though they are required to prove English proficiency. California offered tests in 20 other languages. A number of states have hired other companies to administer commercial driver’s license tests, and those companies are not enforcing the standards drivers are supposed to meet, Duffy said.

“The outside lab is involved in the scam because they are not adequately testing people who went to a phony school,” Duffy said.

He said every American wants the drivers behind the wheel of a big rig to be well-qualified to handle those vehicles. But problems in the trucking industry have long been “rotting around and no one cared about them for decades,” Duffy said.

“Once you started paying attention, you saw that all these bad things were happening,” Duffy said. “And the result of that was Americans getting hurt.” “When we go on the road, we have to expect that we should be safe. And that those who are driving those big 80,000-pound rigs, that they are well-trained, that they are well-qualified, that they will be safe.”

The campaign will also now expand to prevent fraudulent trucking companies from getting into the business while continuing to go after questionable schools and ensuring states comply with all regulations for handing out business licenses.

Earlier this week, the Department of Transport said 557 driving schools would have to close because they failed to meet basic safety standards. The administration has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who should not have qualified for them since a fatal crash in August.

The truck driver, who Duffy says was not authorized to be in the United States, made an illegal turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four earlier this month, have heightened concerns.

The registration system and requirements for trucking companies will be strengthened while Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors conduct more spot inspections of trucks and commercial driver’s license schools, Duffy said.

Currently, businesses only have to pay a few hundred dollars and show proof of insurance to register for business, and then may not be audited until a year or more later.

This made it easier for fraudulent companies known in the industry as war carriers to register multiple times under different names and then simply switch names and registration numbers to avoid any consequences after malfunctions or other violations occurred.

Officials are also trying to ensure that electronic recording devices used by drivers are accurate, and that states follow all regulations to ensure drivers qualify for commercial licenses.

After this Indiana accident, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration took the company that hired the driver out of service and withdrew the DOT numbers assigned to two other companies associated with AJ Partners. Tutash Express and Sam Express in the Chicago area were also disqualified, and the Aydana driving school attended by the truck driver involved in the accident lost its certification.

Immigration authorities arrested that driver because they said the 30-year-old man from Kyrgyzstan had entered the country illegally. Authorities say he pulled out, tried to get around a truck that was slowing in front of him, and his truck collided with an oncoming truck.

In December, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration took action to decertify as many as 7,500 of the nation’s 16,000 schools, but that included many discontinued operations.

The companies involved in the Indiana crash were all registered to the same apartment, Duffy said. In other cases there may be hundreds of these variable companies registered at one address.