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Florida’s move to require driver’s license exams to be offered only in English is a mistake. Not a symbolic mistake. A practical one. A public safety one.
If the goal of our driver’s licensing system is to make roads safer, then the policy objective should be obvious. We should want more people to take the test, not fewer. We should want more people to learn the rules of the road, understand traffic signs, and demonstrate safe driving behavior. Any policy that discourages people from taking the test and becoming licensed moves us in the opposite direction.
Driving is not a cultural exercise. It is a matter of safety.
People who do not speak English still drive in Florida every day. They drive to work, to school, to the grocery store, and to take care of their families. That reality does not disappear because the State changes the language of a test. What does change is whether those drivers are encouraged to learn the rules in a way they can fully understand or are pushed into driving without a license at all.
When you make it harder to get licensed, you do not make driving go away. You make legal driving less accessible.
This policy risks increasing exactly what no one claims to want.
Unlicensed drivers on the road. More traffic stops. More citations. More fines people cannot pay. More court dates. More people pulled into the criminal justice system, not because they are reckless, but because they needed to get to work and could not clear an English-only barrier to licensure.
That is not law and order. That is policy-induced friction.
We should be honest about who pays the price for this. Working people. Immigrants. Families doing what families have always done in Florida. Try to survive, contribute, and move forward.
There is also a basic logical flaw here. If someone can safely operate a vehicle, recognize traffic signals, follow speed limits, and respond appropriately to road conditions, then they can drive safely regardless of what language they speak at home. Safety does not magically improve when comprehension decreases.
In fact, it gets worse.
A driver who fully understands the rules of the road in their strongest language is safer than a driver who is forced to guess their way through an English-only exam. That should not be controversial. That is common sense.
Florida is one of the most diverse states in the country. That diversity powers our economy: Agriculture, construction, hospitality, healthcare, logistics. These sectors do not function without immigrant labor. Pretending otherwise may score political points, but it does not keep anyone safe on I-95.
If we actually care about public safety, the answers are straightforward. Make the test accessible.
Make the standards clear.
Enforce safe driving uniformly.
Encourage compliance instead of engineering avoidance.
Good policy reduces risk. Bad policy multiplies it and then blames the people caught in the middle.
Florida should want safer roads. That means more trained, tested, licensed drivers. Not fewer.
Anything else is just pretending.
