Driving on the road has always been dangerous. But imagine the terror of a 40-ton articulated truck in the hands of an incompetent driver who doesn’t understand traffic signs.
Road safety depends on a simple piece of paper: the driver’s license. The government of Alberta, Canada, has just cracked down on driving schools and transport companies in response to the systematic problem of fraud, despite the many regulatory adjustments to driving. This is a systematic problem on the roads of North America. On October 3, 2025, the Alberta government shut down five schools and 13 trucking companies, imposing more than $100,000 in fines and 39 disciplinary sanctions.
Dismantling Trucking School Fraud
In order to get behind the wheel of a 40-ton truck, you normally have to obtain a specific license. Trucking schools are the gateway to the industry, which can be very lucrative if you come from a less affluent country. Today, mandatory MELT (Mandatory Entry Level Training) must be provided to ensure that future truckers adhere to the rules of the road.
Readers can imagine the horror of the Alberta government when the investigation revealed widespread fraud: schools were selling certificates and keeping records so that students could skip the required training hours. If they paid what the school asked for, they simply signed that they had attended and ended up with their driver’s license. It must be said that this has resulted in an alarming spike in accidents, including dangerous collisions with bridges, poorly loaded trucks at risk of tipping over, or simply poorly driven vehicles.
School closures have resulted in 12 driving instructor licenses being revoked and six corrective action plans being imposed.
But how have they been able to do this for so long? Seven of the three companies that were shut down were chameleons: that is, they changed their names or moved between provinces often to evade regulatory scrutiny of fines. Unfortunately, these companies have been dangerous repeat offenders for years. Many temporary foreign workers, who are often the ones most in need of supervision to ensure they even know how to drive, turned to this type of company. A check in July this year identified about 20% of the 195 drivers in the United States as people with irregular papers.
From Negligence to Death
Fraudulent training has not only been a problem in the United States, but its consequences are exported. The most notorious and unfortunate case this summer was that of Harjinder Singh in Florida. This Indian national, who according to authorities entered the United States illegally in 2018, caused a fatal crash on August 12 when he made a completely illegal U-turn in the middle of the road.
Footage from the interior camera shows him turning around on the road, causing a vehicle carrying a family of three to crash into him. The individual remains unmoved and does not seem to understand that he has just caused the death of three people through his incompetence. This has only fueled the debate, as the person obtained a commercial driver’s license in California despite not having the proper immigration papers, not knowing a word of English, and having no contacts.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. There is also the case of a driver who ran a stop sign in Manitoba in November, killing a mother and her eight-year-old daughter. The individual was a fugitive for nine months before being arrested in August 2025.
Needless to say, this has a negative impact on the community of truckers, who represent 40% of drivers on the west coast of the United States. How have they tried to remedy this? By starting to give English lessons to their truckers so that they know how to communicate with the authorities if they are stopped on the highway—the bar is set very low, as you can see. The tragedy in Florida prompted Secretary of State Marco Rubio to suspend the issuance of any work visas to foreign truckers.
Now the Alberta government is going to be much stricter and more vigilant with all these types of trucking schools. Let’s hope the United States will do the same and start ensuring the accuracy of the paperwork and driver’s licenses of all truckers traveling on the country’s highways.