The Indian immigrant truck driver accused of killing three people in a crash when he made an illegal U-turn across a Florida highway badly flunked English fluency and road sign tests following the smash-up, the US Department of Transportation revealed.
Harjinder Singh answered just two of 12 questions correctly when being tested for English language proficiency by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration after the April 12 crash.
And when asked to read highway signs and their meanings, Singh could only identify one out of four signs shown to him, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced Tuesday.
Despite these failures, Singh – who is believed to have entered the US illegally in 2018 — had been granted commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) in California and Washington state.
“This crash was a preventable tragedy directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
“Non-enforcement and radical immigration policies have turned the trucking industry into a lawless frontier, resulting in unqualified foreign drivers improperly acquiring licenses to operate 40-ton vehicles.”
Singh is accused of sparking the deadly accident after he attempted an illegal U-turn through a highway cut-through marked “Official Use Only,” with his massive tractor trailer blocking the four-lane highway.
A minivan was left without a chance to brake or turn, and hurtled at full speed into the trailer.
All three people in the van were killed, while footage from inside Singh’s cab showed him apparently unmoved by the carnage unfolding outside.
Federal law has mandated for decades that CDL holders must be able to speak English “sufficiently” enough to converse with the public and read road signs – with Duffy signing an order in May to bolster those laws.
And in California, CDL tests are administered only in English, while Washington allows tests to be taken in English, Spanish, Russian, or Serbian-Croatian.
Exactly how Singh was able to obtain a license under those parameters remains unclear, but the DOT said it intended to find out.
“We will use every tool at our disposal to hold these states and bad actors accountable. President Trump and I will restore safety to our roads,” Duffy said.
Singh was nearly deported in 2018 after he was detained crossing the border, but was released on $5,000 bond in January 2019 telling US Citizenship and Immigration Services that he feared returning to India, police sources previously told The Post.
He has been in immigration proceedings ever since.
Under the first Trump administration he was denied a work permit, but was granted one in 2021 under the Biden presidency — details which sparked a social media spat between California Gov. Gavin Newom’s office and the Department of Homeland security.
Singh received his Washington CDL in 2023, and his California license in 2024, the DOT said.
He was arrested in California Saturday by US Marshals on three counts of vehicular homicide.
