The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's most recent statistics on large truck crashes are out, and there's good news: 2.5% fewer fatalities.
- The latest data cover calendar year 2024, when there were 5,340 people killed in traffic crashes involving large trucks, down from 5,478 in 2023, which itself was down 8% from 5,959 in 2022.
- The 5,340 statistic includes 920 large truck occupants killed in crashes -- also down from a 2022 high of 1,098.
- 2024 stats also show 161,201 people injured in traffic crashes involving large trucks and 548,521 such trucks in police-reported crashes.
All those fatalities, injuries and crashes, even with the fatality numbers improvement, leave a lot to be desired.
But 2024 bears another distinction: It was the peak of non-domiciled, non-English speaking commercial drivers on the road.
Overdrive reporting in June of 2025 revealed that by the end of 2024, states had issued thousands upon thousands of non-domiciled CDLs to temporary residents of the U.S.
By the time the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a rulemaking to effectively eliminate that class of licenses, the agency estimated some 200,000 were in circulation, with tens of thousands of those issued improperly or illegally.
That first rulemaking cited five deadly crashes caused by non-domiciled CDL holders, and said the credentials needed to be banned immediately to prevent a surge of other unsafe applicants from getting behind the wheel of a truck.
"FMCSA has recently become aware of a critical safety failure," the agency wrote about non-domiciled CDLs. "The eligibility requirements for obtaining a non-domiciled CLP and CDL are not narrowly tailored to provide a sufficient margin of safety to protect the traveling public, and the existing regulatory framework is unworkable in practice due to systemic deficiencies in State implementation."
FMCSA said the framework for granting non-domiciled CDLs was incentivizing dangerous drivers to get into trucking, which required strengthening vetting standards immediately.
"Dangerous drivers who would be eligible to obtain a non-domiciled CLP or CDL under the current framework but are at risk of causing fatal crashes ... would equally be incentivized to obtain a non-domiciled CLP or CDL before the enhanced standards became effective, resulting in a higher number of dangerous drivers on America's roadways and threatening public safety," the agency wrote.
So why did large truck crash fatality statistics improve in in 2024? That's before the violations of ELP became an out-of-service violation, also before FMCSA's efforts to removed unvetted non-domiciled CDL drivers from the road.
Around the time FMCSA argued against its own CDL issuance practices, Hanson Bridgett partner attorney Gregory Reed called non-domiciled CDLs a nuclear verdict waiting to happen. Every single big trucking organization came out in favor of both the ELP mandate and the non-domiciled CDL ban, all citing safety.
But a legal challenge to FMCSA's rule did in fact argue the agency had "no evidence" that foreign drivers had worse safety outcomes.
Because FMCSA's first non-domiciled ban rulemaking attempt only cited five crashes, the legal challenge argued that these drivers might actually be more safe than U.S. citizens.
"By FMCSA’s logic," wrote the legal team representing unions and owner-ops against the ban, "drivers who are not targeted by the Rule -- that is, U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and holders of certain types of visas -- should be barred from holding CDLs, because they are involved in the overwhelming majority of crashes involving commercial motor vehicles."
Nobody in trucking actually believes that.
Just look to Overdrive readers, drivers with eyes and ears on the ground, who overwhelmingly supported FMCSA's ban.
[Related: DOT's non-domiciled CDL crackdown hugely popular with truck drivers: Overdrive survey results]
The legal challenge succeeded in blocking FMCSA's initial rulemaking attempt late last year, but by February, the agency issued another rule, this time citing unfairness and lapses in licensing protocols, again effectively banning the non-domiciled CDL credential.
The February rulemaking, so far, has succeeded where the first one failed.
“For far too long, America has allowed dangerous foreign drivers to abuse our truck licensing systems -- wreaking havoc on our roadways. This safety loophole ends today,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in February.
Do crash stats prove DOT and FMCSA wrong? Are non-domiciled drivers really not impacting, perhaps even improving safety?
Large truck crash statistics and non-domiciled drivers
First of all, the total number of large truck fatalities is a big, composite number based on accident reports, themselves famously contentious. People aren't always totally aware of, or honest about, what exactly caused a crash.
Second, with millions of trucks on the road traveling billions of miles next to nearly 300 million passenger cars in the U.S., there are literally trillions of reasons why a crash may or may not happen, or why the number may or may not go down in a given year.
"The number of factors that could influence an increase or decrease in large truck crashes from one year to another is virtually endless," said Zach Cahalan, Executive Director of the Truck Safety Coalition, an advocacy group for the victims of truck crashes.
Also, NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts publication doesn't make any determination of just who caused the crash, if it was the truck or the car.
Maybe truckers just got safer. Maybe passenger car drivers did.
Total crash fatalities continued to fall in 2025, the only year that started with more non-domiciled CDL drivers behind the wheel than 2024.
NHTSA's early estimates of total traffic fatalities regardless of vehicle type showed "an estimated 36,640 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, a decrease of about 6.7 percent compared to the 39,254 fatalities reported in 2024."
Maybe the freight-rates slump, entering year three by the end of 2024, had squeezed most shoddy operations out of trucking, and only the stronger, safer remained.
Maybe it's simply that prayer works, though there's still praying to do over 5,340 dead.
These were all real people. A 2.5% decline in large truck-involved crash fatalities, broadly, is obvious good news. But if you knew someone killed or hurt, it was a terrible year.
The non-domiciled crashes cited by FMCSA in its ban were especially egregious. There's a reason Harjinder Singh's ill-fated U-turn went mega viral. The carelessness, the lack of expression on his face, these all resonated with Americans of all types.
Cahalan supports FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL crackdown and ELP rules and calls for more, including mandatory minimum behind-the-wheel hours for in entry level training rule for prospective CDL holders.
"The large truck fatality crisis demands action," said Cahalan. "It is no secret that sham CDL schools and fraudulent ELDs proliferated under the self-certification model. Cracking down on CDL mills and removing ELDs that enable driver fatigue is absolutely necessary, and FMCSA should continue to use all its authorities to do so. It has always been a legitimate safety issue that truck drivers need to be able to read and understand English sufficiently in order to obtain a CDL."
[Related: Prime Route Transport, a Super Ego chameleon fleet, accused of ELD cheating with video evidence]
Cahalan feels the requirement "should be enforced accordingly," he added. "There should be confidence that every driver with a CDL, born in the United States or abroad, has the knowledge and skills necessary to operate a CMV safely."
