A Georgia congressman operating for one of many nation’s best U.S. Senate seats has vowed in social media posts and interviews to make America’s roads safer — by taking industrial driver’s licenses away from noncitizens.
“For those who can’t learn English highway indicators,” Mike Collins, a Republican, posted on Fb in April, “you don’t belong behind the wheel. Interval.”
Collins, the proprietor of a trucking enterprise and a member of the U.S. Home of Representatives’ transportation committee, is without doubt one of the loudest champions of the Trump administration’s effort to revoke licenses from practically 200,000 noncitizen industrial drivers, together with hundreds of truckers. The Trump administration has pushed the coverage ahead though its personal officers have written that there’s no empirical proof to point out that overseas truckers trigger extra crashes than truckers who’re Americans.
On the identical time, nonetheless, Collins has opposed guidelines that specialists say truly would scale back the chances of great crashes. These guidelines might have required that Collins’ household enterprise sink substantial cash into new security measures for its fleet.
Over the previous 25 years, crashes involving truckers for Collins’ enterprise killed 5 folks and injured greater than 50 folks — together with one girl who now wants around-the-clock care because of a extreme mind damage — based on federal knowledge, courtroom filings, plaintiffs’ attorneys and police data.
Drivers and passengers who had been injured in these crashes later claimed in lawsuits that truckers for Collins’ enterprise have prompted them to collectively incur tons of of hundreds of {dollars} in medical bills. The determine the enterprise has paid out will not be identified as a result of the settlements it reached with crash victims have been confidential, as is widespread in such fits. Court docket filings in a single swimsuit state that each events agreed to a $1 million payout from the enterprise’s insurer. Collins’ enterprise denied wrongdoing by truckers and the enterprise itself in these instances.
ProPublica’s evaluation of federal motorcar knowledge from the previous two years reveals that Collins’ enterprise has a better charge of unsafe driving and dashing violations per mile than the vast majority of trucking firms with substantial mileage. The evaluation additionally reveals that the corporate’s current crash charge sits across the median of comparable firms, whereas the speed of damage from these crashes sits within the high fifth.
Security specialists informed ProPublica that among the applied sciences opposed by Collins, which embody gadgets on semitrucks to restrict their pace and sensors on huge rigs to mechanically brake within the face of a possible collision, scale back the chances of crashes resulting in severe accidents and deaths. The nation’s largest trucking commerce group — a bunch that Collins’ household enterprise is a member of, based on the corporate’s web site — has supported mandates for these applied sciences.
“These are confirmed applied sciences,” mentioned Zach Cahalan, government director of the Truck Security Coalition, which advocates on behalf of crash victims and their households. He added that the applied sciences would “defend these we maintain expensive on our roads from horrific tragedy.”
Neither Collins’ marketing campaign nor his congressional workplace responded to ProPublica’s requests for remark or to questions on his household enterprise’s security file or his coverage positions on trucking security. His marketing campaign supervisor declined to make him out there for an interview. The enterprise didn’t reply to questions despatched by ProPublica; an worker informed ProPublica that press inquiries concerning the enterprise are dealt with by Collins’ congressional workplace.
Lately, Collins has described his efforts to maintain overseas truckers off the roads as “purely a security subject.” He has additionally questioned the effectiveness of different security measures and mentioned that they’d have saddled his business with additional prices.
“We wish to be protected,” Collins mentioned in a single congressional listening to. “I don’t know of a trucking firm on the market that doesn’t wish to be protected. And when they don’t seem to be protected, they’re taken off the highway.”
Towards the tip of 2023, his first yr in Congress, Collins had considered one of his first probabilities to help a measure that specialists believed might make the roads safer. The Biden administration had proposed a rule that might require the set up of gadgets to restrict the pace of vans, capping it as little as 60 miles per hour.
However Collins questioned the necessity for the rule. He informed officers at a transportation committee listening to that the federal authorities shouldn’t require the security measure. He mentioned insurance coverage firms already function a ample dashing deterrent, as a result of they’ve the flexibility to chop off protection to truckers with unsafe driving data. He additionally mentioned the rule wasn’t wanted due to one more deterrent that had lengthy been in place.
“They’re referred to as pace restrict indicators,” he mentioned. “They’re enforced by regulation enforcement.”
Collins’ place stood at odds with the business’s largest commerce group, American Trucking Associations, which that yr had expressed help for capping the speeds of vans between 65 and 70 miles per hour. Collins didn’t reply to questions on why his views are at odds with ATA, which represents the pursuits of 37,000 members, together with Collins’ household enterprise.
In 2025, the Trump administration withdrew the pace limiter proposal. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy celebrated the choice as one that might get “D.C. bureaucrats OUT of your vans.”
Collins additionally pushed again in opposition to a special proposal, which might have required vans to have computerized emergency braking programs. That know-how can pressure a truck to decelerate if the potential for a collision is detected.
Federal officers had estimated that the braking system mandate might stop greater than 8,000 accidents a yr. ATA supported a lot of the proposal, too. But Collins, whose household enterprise has used these programs in some vans, defined at current congressional hearings that the know-how was “very costly” and didn’t work that effectively. “Folks don’t perceive that these items are literally hurting greater than they’re serving to proper now,” Collins mentioned at a listening to final yr.
A few of Collins’ truckers have been concerned in crashes due to their alleged failure to decelerate, based on citations and police experiences obtained by ProPublica. Over the previous 5 years, three folks harm in these crashes have sued Collins’ fleet as a result of its truckers allegedly failed to keep up a protected distance, main them to trigger crashes. The plaintiffs claimed that they sustained severe accidents that price 5 to 6 figures in medical bills.
The truckers and Collins’ enterprise denied wrongdoing within the instances. The three instances had been dismissed. Legal professionals for 2 plaintiffs mentioned the instances resulted in a settlement; a lawyer for the third plaintiff didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark concerning the dismissal of the case.
The destiny of computerized emergency braking necessities is now up within the air, too. The Trump administration has delayed the rule from going into impact and, based on ProPublica’s reporting final yr, might slim the scope of it.
Collins has mentioned that his many years within the enterprise make him particularly attuned to security measures that work, in contrast with bureaucrats who’ve “crushed to demise” his business with too many laws. Within the late Eighties, Collins grew to become the top of the household’s trucking firm earlier than he had graduated faculty. He took over for his dad, Mac Collins, who served as a congressman from 1993 to 2005.
Shortly into Mike Collins’ time as president, considered one of his firm’s truckers misplaced management of his trailer. The crash that adopted despatched a 19-year-old girl to the hospital. The trucker later pleaded responsible to driving underneath the affect of cocaine. The enterprise drew scrutiny as a result of that trucker had pleaded no contest to drunk driving earlier that yr however was allowed to remain on the highway. A political opponent later aired a TV advert that accused the household’s trucking enterprise of being cited for “greater than 100” security violations.
On the time, Mac Collins blamed the corporate’s insurer for lacking the drunk-driving conviction in a background verify. He mentioned the advert contained “falsehoods” however didn’t specify what was unsuitable. The corporate in the end fired the trucker after the crash, Mac Collins informed the Ledger-Enquirer in 1994.
The bigger the Collins trucking fleet grew — into considered one of about 100 vans, hauling timber for Georgia-Pacific in addition to tires and metal — the extra site visitors citations and inspection violations its truckers acquired. The info ProPublica reviewed confirmed that truckers have gotten into greater than 90 crashes which have led to not less than 51 accidents and 5 deaths since 2001.
In 2007, one Collins trucker veered into oncoming site visitors on a North Carolina freeway and hit a white Honda CR-V. The CR-V’s driver, Bridget Murphy, and the trucker each died. Murphy’s property and two of Murphy’s passengers filed a lawsuit and, based on a courtroom submitting in 2009, agreed to a $1 million payout from the corporate’s legal responsibility insurance coverage protection. The corporate wrote in a submitting that the trucker had been “affected by a bodily impairment past his management.”
In 2021, one other trucker switched lanes on an Indiana freeway and collided right into a automobile pushed by Larkin Cooper. She claimed in a lawsuit that the trucker’s “negligent and reckless” driving prompted accidents that pressured her to drop out of nursing college and swap to a lesser-paying profession. Her lawyer wrote that the whole damages had been prone to exceed $75,000.
In 2023, a trucker didn’t cease shortly sufficient whereas approaching a crimson site visitors mild on a northeast Georgia freeway, inflicting a four-vehicle crash, based on courtroom data. Drivers in two autos later mentioned in lawsuits that that they had sustained severe medical accidents. One in every of them claimed that the prices to deal with his again, knee and neck totaled greater than $120,000.
Collins didn’t reply ProPublica’s questions concerning the lawsuits. Legal professionals for the household’s enterprise denied wrongdoing within the fits in Indiana and Georgia. Quickly after, the enterprise settled for undisclosed sums.
Throughout a televised debate in April, simply weeks earlier than the Could 19 Republican major for the U.S. Senate race, Collins informed viewers that his time within the trucking enterprise had taught him learn how to work throughout the aisle in Washington, D.C. His political advertisements function him behind the wheel of a rig, and his yard indicators have a brand of an American flag within the form of a semi.
But his messaging about making roads safer facilities on one most important thought: getting noncitizen truckers off the highway.
In a single social video from November, Collins was on one aspect of a cut up display screen, talking a couple of signal on the opposite display screen.
“ what this signal says?” Collins requested. “Nah, neither do I.”
“Y’all, It’s a highway signal from Uzbekistan, which is precisely why I’m in a position to drive a truck in Georgia, however not Uzbekistan,” he continued. “However by some means, y’all, that widespread sense, effectively, it didn’t apply to at least one man on our roads.”
Collins then changed a photograph of the signal with a mug shot of an undocumented trucker named Akhror Bozorov. Collins mentioned he had been “wished in Uzbekistan for terrorism and spreading Jihad.” After Bozorov was arrested final yr, the Division of Homeland Safety revealed a press launch that criticized Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s transportation division for issuing a license to Bozorov and President Joe Biden’s administration for granting the trucker his work authorization.
Collins went one step additional and used the trucker’s story to assault the politician he’s attempting to unseat, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., for not being robust sufficient on immigration.
He additionally cited Bozorov’s story as justification to strip noncitizen truckers of their licenses — however didn’t current proof that noncitizen truckers make the roads much less protected.
In March, the Trump administration enacted its rule that might ultimately revoke industrial licenses from practically 200,000 noncitizen drivers. However based on the administration’s preliminary evaluation of its personal rule final yr, “There may be not ample proof, derived from well-designed, rigorous, quantitative analyses, to reliably exhibit a measurable empirical relationship” between a trucker’s citizenship standing and security outcomes.
A letter from practically 20 Democratic state attorneys normal identified that the Trump administration cited solely 5 deadly crashes final yr that had been brought on by noncitizens with industrial driver’s licenses, out of greater than 4,000 deaths involving CDL drivers nationwide. The letter mentioned that the Trump administration’s rule offered “no info” to help the declare that revoking hundreds of licenses would “profit public security.”
Public curiosity legal professionals have additionally filed a authorized problem to the rule. The problem is pending.
“The notion that immigrant drivers are much less protected than different drivers will not be supported by the info,” mentioned Wendy Liu, one of many legal professionals who filed the problem.
The identical week that Trump’s rule was enacted, Collins doubled down on his calls to limit industrial licenses for noncitizens, writing in an Instagram submit that “this isn’t some sport. Lives are at stake. Deport these thugs now.”
