A Georgia representative running for one of the region’s most aggressive U. S. Senate seats has vowed in social media posts and discussions to create America’s roads safer — by taking business driver’s licenses apart from noncitizens.
You don’t belong behind the wheel, according to Republican Mike Collins, who posted on Instagram in April, “if you can’t learn English road signs.” Period”.
One of the loudest supporters of the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke certificates from nearly 200, 000 noncitizen commercial motorists, including thousands of truckers, is Collins, the owner of a freight company and a part of the U.S. House of Representatives ‘ transportation council. The Trump administration has pushed the plan forward even though its own leaders have written that there’s no empirical evidence to show that unusual drivers cause more accidents than drivers who are American citizens.
Collins has, however, opposed rules that experts claim basically would lower the risk of severe crashes. Those rules may have required that Collins ‘ home business drop large cash into new safety measures for its fleet.
According to federal data, court filings, plaintiffs ‘ attorneys, and police records, truckers for Collins ‘ business have been involved in crashes that have resulted in the deaths of five people and injure more than 50 others over the past 25 years.
Drivers and passengers who were injured in those accidents later claimed in complaints that drivers for Collins ‘ business have caused them to collectively pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical costs. Because the settlements it reached with crash victims were confidential, as is common in such suits, the figure the business has paid out is unknown. Court filings in one suit state that both parties agreed to a$ 1 million payout from the business’s insurer. In those circumstances, Collins ‘ business denied wrongdoing by truckers and the company itself.
ProPublica’s analysis of federal motor vehicle data from the past two years shows that Collins ‘ business has a higher rate of unsafe driving and speeding violations per mile than the majority of trucking companies with substantial mileage. The analysis also reveals that the company’s recent crash rate is around the median among similar companies, while the rate of injuries from those accidents is in the top fifth place.
Safety experts told ProPublica that some of the technologies opposed by Collins, which include devices on semitrucks to limit their speed and sensors on big rigs to automatically brake in the face of a potential collision, reduce the odds of crashes leading to serious injuries and deaths. According to the company’s website, the country’s largest trucking trade organization supports mandates for those technologies. Collins ‘ family business is a member of one of these organizations.
” These are proven technologies”, said Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, which advocates on behalf of crash victims and their families. He added that the latest innovations would “protect people we hold dear on our roads from horrifying tragedy.”
Neither Collins ‘ campaign nor his congressional office responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment or to questions about his family business’s safety record or his policy positions on trucking safety. His campaign manager turned down his availability for an interview. The business did not respond to questions sent by ProPublica, an employee told ProPublica that press inquiries about the business are handled by Collins ‘ congressional office.
In recent years, Collins has referred to his efforts as “purely a safety issue” as a “purely safety issue.” He has also questioned the effectiveness of other safety measures and said that they would have saddled his industry with extra costs.
In a congressional hearing, Collins said,” We want to be safe. ” I don’t know of a trucking company out there that doesn’t want to be safe. And they are taken off the road when they are unsafe.
Toward the end of 2023, his first year in Congress, Collins had one of his first chances to support a measure that experts believed could make the roads safer. A rule from the Biden administration had been suggested that would require the installation of barriers that would restrict the speed of trucks, with a top speed of 60 mph.
But Collins questioned the need for the rule. He claimed at a hearing before the transportation committee that the federal government shouldn’t have to pay for the safety measure. He said insurance companies already serve as a sufficient speeding deterrent, because they have the ability to cut off coverage to truckers with unsafe driving records. He added that the requirement for the rule was not necessary because there was already another deterrent in place.
” They are called speed limit signs”, he said. They are “forced by law enforcement,” the statement goes.
Collins ‘ position stood at odds with the industry’s largest trade group, American Trucking Associations, which that year had expressed support for capping the speeds of trucks between 65 and 70 miles per hour. Collins did not respond to inquiries about why his opinions conflict with those of ATA, which represents the interests of 37, 000 people, including Collins ‘ family business.
In 2025, the Trump administration withdrew the speed limiter proposal. Sean Duffy, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, praised the decision as one that would “get D. C. bureaucrats OUT of your trucks.”
Collins also pushed back against a different proposal, which would have required trucks to have automatic emergency braking systems. If a truck has the potential for colliding, the technology can force the truck to slow down.
Federal officials had estimated that the braking system mandate could prevent more than 8, 000 injuries a year. ATA also backed a large portion of the proposal. Yet Collins, whose family business has used those systems in some trucks, explained at recent congressional hearings that the technology was “very expensive” and didn’t work that well. At a hearing last year, Collins said,” People don’t understand that these things are actually hurting more than they’re helping right now.”
Some of Collins ‘ truckers have been involved in crashes because of their alleged failure to slow down, according to citations and police reports obtained by ProPublica. Three people who were hurt in those crashes have filed lawsuits against Collins ‘ fleet over the past five years because its truckers allegedly erred by keeping a safe distance, leading to crashes. The plaintiffs claimed that they sustained serious injuries that cost five to six figures in medical expenses.
The truckers and Collins ‘ businesses have consistently denied wrongdoing in the cases. The three cases were dismissed. A third plaintiff’s lawyer did not respond to numerous requests for comment regarding the dismissal of the case, despite two plaintiffs ‘ lawyers saying the cases settled.
The fate of automatic emergency braking requirements is now up in the air, too. The Trump administration has prevented the rule from becoming effective, which may have a broader impact than ProPublica reported last year.
In contrast to bureaucrats who have “beaten to death” his industry with too many regulations, Collins has stated that his decades in the industry make him especially adept at using safety measures that work. In the late 1980s, Collins became the head of the family’s trucking company before he had graduated college. He succeeded his father, Mac Collins, who served as a congressman from 1993 to 2005.
Shortly into Mike Collins ‘ time as president, one of his company’s truckers lost control of his trailer. A 19-year-old woman was taken to the hospital as a result of the subsequent collision. The trucker later pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of cocaine. Because that trucker had pleaded no contest to drunk driving earlier that year but was permitted to remain on the road, the business was subject to scrutiny. A political opponent later aired a TV ad that accused the family’s trucking business of being cited for “more than a hundred” safety violations.
Mac Collins was adamant about missing the drunk driving conviction in a background check on the company’s insurer at the time. He said the ad contained “falsehoods” but didn’t specify what was wrong. According to Mac Collins, the trucker was ultimately let go after the collision, according to the Ledger-Enquirer in 1994.
The larger the Collins trucking fleet grew — into one of about 100 trucks, hauling timber for Georgia-Pacific as well as tires and steel — the more traffic citations and inspection violations its truckers received. Since 2001, truckers have been involved in at least 51 injuries and five deaths in at least 51 crashes, according to the data ProPublica reviewed.
In 2007, one Collins trucker veered into oncoming traffic on a North Carolina highway and hit a white Honda CR-V. Bridget Murphy, the driver of the CR-V, and the trucker both passed away. Murphy’s estate and two of Murphy’s passengers filed a lawsuit and, according to a court filing in 2009, agreed to a$ 1 million payout from the company’s liability insurance coverage. The trucker had been” stricken by a physical impairment beyond his control,” according to the company in a filing.
In 2021, another trucker switched lanes on an Indiana highway and collided into a car driven by Larkin Cooper. She claimed in a lawsuit that the trucker’s “negligent and reckless” driving resulted in injuries that required her to drop out of nursing school and pursue a less-paying career. Her lawyer wrote that the total damages were likely to exceed$ 75, 000.
According to court records, a trucker failed to stop quickly enough as it approached a red traffic light on a northeast Georgia highway in 2023, resulting in a four-vehicle crash. Drivers in two vehicles later said in lawsuits that they had sustained serious medical injuries. One of them claimed that more than$ 120 000 was spent on treating his back, knee, and neck.
Collins did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the lawsuits. In the lawsuits in Indiana and Georgia, the family’s business’ lawyers argued that there had been no wrongdoing. Soon after, the business settled for undisclosed sums.
In a televised debate in April, just weeks before the May 19 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, Collins claimed that his experience driving a truck had taught him how to navigate the aisles in Washington, D.C. His political ads feature him driving a rig, and his yard signs feature an American flag in the shape of a semi with the logo of an American flag.
Yet his messaging about making roads safer centers on one main idea: getting noncitizen truckers off the road.
In a November social video, Collins was speaking about a sign on the other screen while standing on one side of a split screen.
” You know what this sign says”? Collins posed a question. ” Nah, neither do I”.
It’s a road sign from Uzbekistan, he continued, “Y’all, that’s exactly why I’m able to drive a truck in Georgia, but not Uzbekistan.” ” But somehow, y’all, that common sense, well, it didn’t apply to one man on our roads”.
The sign’s photo was then replaced by a mugshot of an undocumented trucker, Akhror Bozorov, who was also in the photo. Collins said he had been “wanted in Uzbekistan for terrorism and spreading Jihad”. The Department of Homeland Security released a press release criticizing Pennsylvania Governor after Bozorov was detained last year. Josh Shapiro’s transportation department for issuing a license to Bozorov and President Joe Biden’s administration for granting the trucker his work authorization.
Collins went one step further and attacked U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., for not being tough enough on immigration using the trucker’s account.
He also cited Bozorov’s story as justification to strip noncitizen truckers of their licenses— but failed to present evidence that noncitizen truckers make the roads less safe.
The Trump administration issued its rule in March that could eventually revoke nearly 200, 000 noncitizen drivers ‘ commercial licenses. But according to the administration’s initial analysis of its own rule last year,” There is not sufficient evidence, derived from well-designed, rigorous, quantitative analyses, to reliably demonstrate a measurable empirical relationship” between a trucker’s citizenship status and safety outcomes.
Out of more than 4, 000 deaths involving CDL drivers nationwide, the Trump administration cited only five fatal crashes last year that were caused by noncitizens with commercial driver’s licenses, according to a letter from nearly 20 Democratic state attorneys general. The letter said that the Trump administration’s rule presented” no facts” to support the claim that revoking thousands of licenses would “benefit public safety”.
A legal challenge to the rule has also been filed by lawyers for the public interest. The challenge is pending.
One of the attorneys who filed the challenge, Wendy Liu, said,” The notion that immigrant drivers are less safe than other drivers is not supported by the facts.”
The same week that Trump’s rule was enacted, Collins doubled down on his calls to restrict commercial licenses for noncitizens, writing in an Instagram post that” this isn’t some game. There are lives at stake. Deport these thugs now”.
A U.S. Senate Candidate claims that foreign truckers are putting a bad foot on American soil. His Own Truckers Have Caused Harm. first appeared on ProPublica.
