Beginning Feb. 6, Florida will require all driver's license tests to be in English only. This change applies to all driver license classifications and all knowledge and skills-based tests, including oral tests. Everything. This will ensure that all drivers licensed in Florida are proficient in English.
Exams for a non-commercial driver’s license have been offered in multiple languages, and even commercial driver license knowledge exams are available in English and Spanish. Under this new policy, all languages except English will be banned, and no translation devices or helpers will be allowed, as was previously the case.
This policy change — which should have been the policy all along — follows a rash of high-profile fatal accidents around the nation caused by drivers who, it turns out, did not speak English and often were not in the country legally.
One of the most horrific examples was in Florida. An illegal immigrant from India was driving a semi-trailer truck on the Florida Turnpike last August and made an illegal U-turn across lanes of traffic through a median divide, killing three people who were in a car that smashed into the trailer, with no time to get out of the way before he turned. Those three people were Haitians, at least one of whom came to the U.S. in 2023 under Joe Biden’s Temporary Protected Status program.
The Indian truck driver, Harjinder Singh, was charged and arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on three counts of vehicular homicide. Singh, who reportedly speaks no English, had failed a commercial driver’s license test 10 times in just two months in 2023 before being issued one in California.
Requiring the tests to be in English is just common sense, but as that commodity is in such short supply these days, the English requirement also is rare. Only three other states require the tests in English alone: South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming — states with minimal foreign-language speakers.
California, which leads the nation in terrible ideas, offers driver's license tests in 32 languages. New York offers them in 20 languages. Even Florida, before Feb. 6, provided driver’s license tests in English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian Creole, and Russian. The obvious problem, of course, is that street signs in all of the states are not in 32 or 20 languages. They are in English.
The change is essential beyond the obvious common sense. It shows that with a little political backbone, which Florida has in spades at the moment, even big, diverse states can do the right thing.
There may not be much blowback in South Dakota or Wyoming, but about 23 percent of Florida residents are Spanish-speaking, the third-largest percentage behind California and Texas. That makes it a bold step. And of course, it will be challenged in court on numerous spurious grounds by the same perfidious organizations that defend every other bad idea.
While common sense is in short supply among much of our political elite, it is not short among Americans. Americans have long supported English-only laws and policies.
A 2025 poll by Rasmussen Reports found that 73 percent of likely U.S. voters would support a law that made English the official language of the U.S. government, including 54 percent who would strongly support such a law. Only 21 percent were opposed.
This does not require any bold political capital. It’s the right thing to do, and it's free—a political home run. The rest of red-state America should follow suit immediately. And then do the same thing for something arguably more important: election ballots.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
