A Dallas area woman's daughter missed the school bus. So naturally the mother was a little bit upset. She hurried to her car to take her daughter to school. In her rush she apparently forgot to grab her driver's license. Oops! That was her first mistake. I'm sure there are many of us who have done the same thing. Shame, shame.
The woman got pulled over by a Dallas police officer for making an illegal U-turn. He also ticketed her for no driver's license and then he also gave her a third ticket for being a non-English speaking driver. Say what? Well there is a federal law that says commercial drivers must speak English. But there is no such state law for individual drivers in Texas. The woman is learning English so it is not as if she spoke no English at all. For most people it is humiliating enough to get one ticket while taking a child to school. She got three.
Of course the media jumped all over this story. The Dallas Police Department regretted what happened and said they thought it was clearly a mistake by an officer in training. The woman said it seemed to her that the rookie cop needed more training. A court dismissed the non English speaking driver ticket. I just hope she doesn't plan on getting a job as a commercial truck driver. At least until she has learned to speak English a little better.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Woman Gets Ticket For Not Speaking English
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4 comments:
Okay, I am all for people who want to live in our country learning to read and speak English, but that law against driving commercially if you can't speak English is just a bit scary to me. It smacks of prejudice and demands conformity. Next they will write a law that one can't drive truck unless one is a blond-haired, blue eyed male.
Police ticket first and worry about it later. The police acting in a less than rational manner is so common it hardly merits attention except to force a correction.
I'm all for people who live in the US to learn to speak English too, but this case sounds like a case of over zealous ticketing to me.
I hope she doesn't see this incident as an excuse to enrich herself with a lawsuit either.
She's lived in the country since 1980, I think after 30 years she could have taken a time to learn some of the language.
She already has a lawyer.
http://cbs4denver.com/watercooler/non.english.ticket.2.1270658.html
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