LAKEWOOD, Colo. — The State of Colorado has shut down a truck driver testing facility for hundreds of violations. Now, the Colorado Department of Revenue is working to find all those commercial drivers who may or may not know how to drive a big truck on the roads next to the rest of us.
For now, an empty parking lot in Lakewood is the safest place to make sure truck drivers actually know how to drive a truck.
For weeks now, the state DMV has set up shop there, retesting more than 180 people who got their commercial driver’s license (CDL) from a place called Randy Lopez CDL Testing and Training. The state found so many violations, it shut the business down in December. Now it's trying to figure out whether the truck driving school gave licenses to people who should never have been on the road.
Documents obtained from the state Department of Revenue show the driving school scored tests incorrectly, gave applicants credit for parts of the test they didn’t take, and didn’t record speeding violations that happened during driving tests. Those are just a few of hundreds of problems recorded in state audits.
"We need to end up ensuring that person has the proper skills and knows what they’re doing out there," said Greg Fulton, president of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association. "We have people out there that frankly were not meeting the standard for what’s essential in our industry."
9NEWS spoke to Randy Lopez on the phone Tuesday afternoon about why his business was shut down. He said no one passed the driving test who shouldn’t have, and that the problems were just “clerical errors.”
Again, the state’s audit found hundreds of problems including not marking down speeding violations on driving tests and giving credit to people on parts of the tests they never took. It's unclear if the state also considers those just "clerical errors."
183 people got CDL's from the company in the past six months before it was closed in December. There is enough doubt that some of those people shouldn’t be on the road that the state made the decisions to retest everyone. If enough people fail the tests, the state says it will consider going back even further and making sure others know what they’re doing on the road.
"We are a more regulated industry than almost any in the country," Fulton said. "But like any industry, there are some bad actors, and we are committed to getting those people out of the industry."
A truck driver who killed a family of five on I-25 in Weld County in 2022 didn’t have a proper commercial driver’s license. He’s now facing vehicular homicide charges.
Now, the state is cracking down on driving schools that may put people on the road who should never be there.
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