Trucker Fined For Not Speaking English
MANUEL Castillo has been driving for 20 years.
Like our patron Old Mr Anorak, he probably drives wearing tan driving gloves, a Cambridge flat cap, with a travel clock on the dashboard and a scale model silver effigy of a rutting stag attached fast to the bonnet.
Mr Castillo is driving through Alabama in a truck filled with onions. He is not speeding.
An officer pulls him over. After a brief exchange he is handed a $500 ticket for being a “non-English-speaking driver.”
Says he: “It just doesn’t seem fair to be ticketed if I wasn’t doing anything dangerous on the road.”
Federal law requires that anyone with a commercial driver’s licence 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.
In a list of things you can do anywhere in the world without language and still make yourself entirely understood, driving comes in ahead of football violence, leering and being violently sick, and just behind being patronised by a policeman.
Wing commander Castillo can consider himself unlucky to have been so treated, and reserved not to have responded to his accuser with a kind of sign language that is all too understandable….
July 21st, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I should have thought anyone in Alabama would only understand another person from Alabama. Would the upright citizen in uniform have understood say ie our Queen?
Anorak rutting stag? thought it was the Spirit of Ecstasy?
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:12 am
I think it’s only right and proper and that - that everybody speak English as proper as what they can do and that - coz it can be a right pain in the arse and that - if a non-English-speaking trucker from Herzogovenia and that gets stopped in the middle of County Durham like and can’t be understood.
And fuck knows what would happen if he was stopped in Newcastle like!
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:55 am
or Achiltibuie even !
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 am
Och aye the noo! X
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 am
Or anywhere in Yorkshire for that matter!
Or Lincoln!
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Spanish is a recognised language even in the United States, so it sounds to me like a bit of hispanic bigotry - if Europe started fining Americans for not speaking their languages (or Brits come to that), they’d make a bloody fortune…!!
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
If they did, we would not go and their Lager industries would collapse
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
A couple of weeks ago my band was playing at one of the charming southern wisconsin redneck ratholes that we tend to end up in. One of the drunks was wearing a T shirt with the well known “Uncle Sam wants you” picture on the front, underneath that were the words “To speak English”. He actually walked up to the band and showed us his T shirt like he was real proud of it. Our drummer is of Mexican heritage so I took offence on his behalf.
“So you think everyone should speak English eh?” I asked him. “Yeah!” he replied.
“Well, I actually do,” I told him, “what you’re speaking… I’m not certain. Some strange mutatated version of my mother tongue it would seem.”
It took him a while but he finally figured out he was being insulted, this was made worse by a bunch of people laughing at him.
And away he lurched…………..
Englishman 1 Redneck 0
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Mutatated? Mutated surely.
Dyslexic typing strikes again.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
…maybe it was doubly mutated - wouldn’t surprise me by your description!!
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Why is it so bad to expect a person operating a vehicle on the roads of this country (USA) to speak the language so he can communicate with officials when needed Now, if he was stopped for no reason maybe they should look into the probable cause of the stop? I know where I live, the officer must have what is called “probable cause” to stop you. They have to have a reason to make the stop. Maybe it’s different for trucks? I don’t know. Doesn’t he have to stop at weigh stations like the rest of the truck drivers??