The alleged semi-truck driver who killed three people while making a U-turn at an “Official Use Only” turn on the Florida Turnpike is an ILLEGAL MIGRANT who was granted a commercial driver’s license by the State of California.
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 17, 2025
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My Comment:
This incident, which would otherwise be a minor local story, went viral for what should be obvious reasons. It touches on some of the biggest live wires in the United States today, illegal immigration and migration from India in general. I have a personal connection to the case as I work in a related industry and I have often wondered if everyone driving a truck was here legally.
To be clear, Mr. Singh should absolutely not have been able to get a CDL. You have to be a legal resident of the United States to drive a truck legally, so how did he get a CDL? Well, it must have involved some kind of fraud.
Unfortunately, fraud in California's driver schools is pretty rampant. There have been several major cases of fraud in their schools and it's very likely that this incident is another case of it. These companies target Indians specifically, partially because of nepotism (they are often run by legal Indian immigrants) and because Indian truck driver accept conditions that many American born drivers would not. I am guessing there will be a crack down on these driving schools, perhaps even involving ICE raids. California is a big factor in this as the state refuses to crack down on anything related to immigration so I am guessing that the federal government will have to get involved if something is going to change.
In a way they already have. Trump issued an executive order that replaced an Obama era order that loosened up the rules on drivers speaking and understanding English. Under Trump's order many of the truck drivers that can barely speak English or not at all, have been taken of the road. Though not all illegal immigrants have trouble with English, and some Americans are not native English speakers, I am guessing the majority of folks grounded by the order are illegal immigrants. I know that I have personally had to not use my phone as a translation device nearly as much after Trump put that order into place. Singh, being presumably Indian (because he's obviously Sikh and that's where they come from), might not have been caught this way as he may have had English language proficiency.
I do wonder if there were cultural considerations at play. I have met many Indian truck drivers and while many of them are fine, many other ones are pretty bad at their jobs. To be fair, there are a lot of bad truck drivers of every race and ethnicity. But I do wonder if they are simply doing what they do in India, which is pretty infamous for weak traffic laws and an "anything goes" attitude towards driving. Some of that is simply due to how many people there are, but much of it is simply cultural. Which means that if these truck drivers assimilate they will eventually do better at driving. And a competent driving school should be able to break any bad habits they got from their home country and fail them if they can't adapt, but that isn't what happened here.
Regardless, they shouldn't get that chance if they are here illegally. There is zero reason why Mr. Singh was able to driver a truck. He was taking a job away from an American citizen, or, at the very least, someone in the country illegally. Someone who is willing to do that might not care about breaking traffic laws either as he already broke the law about crossing the border or getting a license legally. Without knowing more about him, I don't know if he was simply incompetent or if he just didn't care. Given his lack of reaction to causing three deaths, I would say it was the 2nd.
Some of this is due to a competence crisis in the trucking industry in general. Though often touted as an easy way to make a living, trucking doesn't seem to be that good to me. The money can be good, but the conditions are pretty terrible. At its best you are away from home, sometimes weeks at a time. But truckers also have to deal with awful traffic, nanny state monitoring of their driving (getting filmed is standard), a total lack of parking and places to sleep, and general poor condition. Plus there is the perception that it's a doomed job as folks think that self-driving trucks will replace all truck drivers (which I find unlikely, airplanes are mostly automated now but still need pilots).
It's these factors that are driving a lot of competent people from the industry and it leads to drivers of the quality of Mr. Singh here. When you drive the smart people out you are left with the guys that think making a U-turn on a highway or reversing down a busy street are smart things to do. I think if you improve the conditions of truck driving you might see competent folks flocking to it again, but what we are doing now is not sustainable.
As for the accident itself, Singh was obviously at fault. This incident shows exactly why you can't use those "official use only" turn arounds. A huge semi-truck will block all the lanes, leaving nowhere for the cars on the highway to go. Even if the driver of the mini-van was paying close attention they would have had difficulty not crashing into the trailer, and doing so at highway speed is a death sentence. The scary part of this is that it could have been any one of us, I don't see how anyone could have avoided hitting that trailer.
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