Collins Vows Safer Roads—While His Trucking’s Record Raises Doubts

A Georgia Senate candidate links road safety to revoking noncitizen CDL licenses, but records tied to his trucking business raise questions.

A Georgia Republican running for one of the most closely watched U.S.. Senate seats is making “road safety” a centerpiece of his campaign. promising to strip commercial driver’s licenses from noncitizens—while critics point to crash history and disputed safety stances tied to his own trucking operation.

Mike Collins. a congressman and a member of the House Transportation Committee who also runs a trucking business. posted in April that anyone who cannot read English road signs “doesn’t belong behind the wheel.” The pledge lines up with a policy advanced by the Trump administration to revoke or take away commercial driver’s licenses for nearly 200. 000 noncitizen drivers. including truckers.

Collins has been among the most vocal champions of that approach.. Yet the administration’s own internal material. as described in the report. acknowledged there was no empirical evidence proving a measurable link between citizenship status and crash outcomes—specifically noting a lack of rigorous quantitative analysis to demonstrate that foreign truckers cause more crashes than U.S.. citizens.

The thrust of Collins’ campaign messaging is stark: he argues foreign commercial drivers are a public safety risk and should be removed from U.S.. roads.. In doing so. he has also pushed back against federal rulemaking and safety technologies that experts say can prevent the kinds of severe injuries and deaths that come from serious trucking crashes.

Collins’ stance has drawn renewed scrutiny because his family trucking business has been tied. in court filings and the reported record of crashes and violations. to a long list of serious incidents.. Over roughly the past 25 years. crashes involving drivers for Collins’ business killed five people and injured more than 50 others. according to the report’s description of federal data. court filings. plaintiffs’ attorneys. and police records.. One injured woman is described as requiring around-the-clock care after a severe brain injury.

Victims and passengers who were injured later brought lawsuits seeking compensation. including claims that medical costs and other damages ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.. The report notes that the amounts actually paid are not fully known because settlements were confidential—an arrangement common in these cases.. In at least one lawsuit described in the record. the court filings say the parties agreed to a $1 million payout from the business’s insurer.. The business denied wrongdoing in those cases.

According to the reported analysis. federal motor vehicle data suggest higher levels of certain violations tied to Collins’ company relative to most competitors.. The report states that an analysis of data over the past two years found the company had a higher rate of unsafe driving and speeding violations per mile than the majority of trucking companies with substantial mileage.. It also reports that while the crash rate for the company sits around the median for similar firms. the injury rate from those crashes is in the top fifth.

Safety experts interviewed in the report said some of the technologies Collins opposed—such as speed-limiting devices for semitrucks and sensors that automatically brake when collision threats are detected—reduce the odds of crashes causing serious injuries and deaths.. The report also says the country’s largest trucking trade group. American Trucking Associations. has supported speed caps within a specified range and has backed much of the emergency braking proposal Collins opposed.

Collins and his campaign did not respond to questions described in the report. including requests for comment and inquiries about his family business’s safety record and his policy positions.. The campaign manager also declined to make him available for an interview. and the business did not answer additional questions; an employee reportedly said press inquiries were handled through Collins’ congressional office.

Much of the debate over Collins’ road-safety approach has focused on whether safety improvements should come through targeted technology mandates or through immigration-driven license restrictions.. In congressional and public remarks described in the report. Collins framed his opponents as relying on “bureaucrats” rather than practical deterrents.

Toward the end of 2023. during Collins’ first year in Congress. the report says he had one of his early opportunities to back a rule aimed at limiting the speed of trucks.. The Biden administration proposed requirements for devices that could cap truck speeds as low as 60 miles per hour.. Collins questioned the need for the mandate. telling officials the federal government shouldn’t require it and arguing that insurers could deter unsafe driving by cutting off coverage.

He also pointed to an old-fashioned enforcement argument: that speed limit signs are already in place and are enforced by law enforcement.. That position. the report notes. put him at odds with the American Trucking Associations at the time. which expressed support for capping speeds of trucks between 65 and 70 miles per hour.

In 2025, the Trump administration withdrew the proposal to install speed limiters, according to the report. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy celebrated the decision as keeping “D.C. bureaucrats” out of trucks.

Collins also opposed automatic emergency braking requirements, which would force trucks to slow down when sensors detect a potential collision.. The report says federal officials estimated the mandate could prevent thousands of injuries each year. and that American Trucking Associations supported much of the proposal.

At congressional hearings described in the report. Collins argued emergency braking was “very expensive” and did not work well. contending that the technology could actually increase harm.. The report also notes that Collins’ own business has used such systems in some trucks. while plaintiffs tied to crashes alleged that other drivers failed to slow down in situations where braking automation might have helped.

The report describes how some drivers for Collins’ fleet were cited in connection with alleged failures to maintain safe distances. and that multiple injury lawsuits were filed.. In those cases, the plaintiffs claimed serious injuries with medical expenses in the five- to six-figure range.. The report says the truck drivers and the business denied wrongdoing. and that the three cases were dismissed—while noting that two plaintiffs’ lawyers said the matters ended in settlement and that a third plaintiff’s lawyer did not respond to requests about the dismissal.

The fate of automatic emergency braking rules remains uncertain, the report states, with the Trump administration delaying the effective date and possibly narrowing the scope.

Collins’ career in trucking has also shaped how he describes his policy approach, the report says.. He has argued his decades in the business make him better attuned to safety measures than federal regulators. which he has characterized as overburdening industry with regulations.. Still. the report places that argument alongside a documented record of crashes and the reported contention that some safety technologies he criticized are supported by major industry groups and crash victims’ advocates.

His history in the business dates to the late 1980s. when he became head of the family trucking company before completing college. according to the report.. He took over for his father, Mac Collins, who served in Congress from 1993 to 2005.. The report also recounts that shortly after Mike Collins took over. a trucker lost control of a trailer and a 19-year-old woman was sent to the hospital.. The trucker later pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of cocaine. and the business faced scrutiny related to the circumstances around an earlier drunk-driving conviction.. The report says the company later fired the trucker, according to Mac Collins’ account in 1994.

As Collins’ fleet expanded, the report says it also accumulated more citations and inspection violations.. The report states that from 2001 onward. truckers for the company had more than 90 crashes leading to at least 51 injuries and five deaths.. Examples in the report include a 2007 crash in North Carolina that killed both a trucker and the driver of a Honda CR-V; a 2021 crash in Indiana involving alleged negligent driving that impacted a plaintiff’s nursing career; and a 2023 crash in northeast Georgia involving a red traffic light that led to claims of serious injuries and medical costs.. In the described cases, the report says the company denied wrongdoing and later reached settlements for undisclosed amounts.

Outside policy debates in Washington. Collins has leaned heavily on immigration-themed road-safety messaging during his campaign. including in advertisements and social media posts.. The report says that just weeks before the May 19 Republican primary. Collins told viewers that experience in trucking taught him how to work across the aisle. while his campaign materials portray him behind the wheel and use semi-themed imagery.

But the report’s account of Collins’ most prominent road-safety narrative centers on removing noncitizen truckers from the road.. In a video from November described in the report. Collins pointed to a road sign from Uzbekistan and contrasted what he said is his ability to drive in Georgia with supposed restrictions on Uzbekistan.. The report says he then used the story of an undocumented trucker. Akhror Bozorov. and accused the politician he is running against. U.S.. Sen.. Jon Ossoff, of not being tough enough on immigration.

The report says that Bozorov was arrested last year and that the Department of Homeland Security issued a press release criticizing Pennsylvania Gov.. Josh Shapiro’s transportation department for issuing a license and the Biden administration for granting work authorization.. Collins then used Bozorov’s case to argue for stripping noncitizen truckers of licenses. the report says. while not offering evidence that noncitizen truckers overall make roads less safe.

In March. the Trump administration enacted a rule that could eventually revoke commercial licenses for nearly 200. 000 noncitizen drivers. the report states.. The report also says that the initial analysis for that rule did not find sufficient evidence to prove a measurable empirical relationship between citizenship and safety outcomes.

The legal and political challenges described in the report are also part of the story.. A letter from nearly 20 Democratic state attorneys general said the Trump administration relied on limited information—citing only five fatal crashes caused by noncitizens with commercial driver’s licenses out of more than 4. 000 deaths involving CDL drivers nationwide—and that the rule offered “no facts” to support the argument that revoking thousands of licenses would benefit public safety.. Public interest lawyers have also filed a legal challenge, the report says, and it is still pending.

“The notion that immigrant drivers are less safe than other drivers is not supported by the facts,” one of the lawyers involved in the challenge, Wendy Liu, said in the report.

The report also recounts that the same week the Trump administration’s rule was enacted, Collins doubled down on his calls in social media posts, framing the issue as urgent and tied to safety and enforcement.

The report includes details of how its analysis was conducted using federal motor vehicle data.. It describes how federal tracking systems from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration were used to examine inspections. violations. and crashes. focusing on a recent two-year window that feeds into a safety measurement system.. It also describes how crash and violation rates were calculated using per-mile measures. and how Collins’ company was compared with thousands of other active trucking companies exceeding a high-mile threshold.

For the two-year period described in the report—spanning late March 2024 through late March 2026—Collins’ company was reported to have unsafe driving violations and crashes that resulted in injuries. with notes about which crashes were evaluated for preventability.. The report says the company’s per-mile crash rate placed it higher than the majority of comparable firms for crashes and that its per-mile rates for injuries and certain violation categories were higher than roughly four-fifths of other companies in the analysis.

Taken together. the report’s account portrays a campaign where the candidate’s stated road-safety agenda—focused on the immigration status of commercial drivers—runs alongside a policy record that. according to safety experts. has opposed technologies designed to prevent severe crashes.. Whether voters see that as inconsistent or as a calculated political strategy could be a defining factor in the race. with immigration enforcement and trucking safety both pressing issues for Georgia and the broader national debate.

Mike Collins Senate noncitizen CDL licenses trucking safety rules automatic emergency braking speed limiter mandate immigration and road safety