Federal authorities are investigating a bus crash on Friday on Interstate 95 in Stafford County, Virginia, that left five dead, including a family of four, and 34 others injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board posted on social media that it’s working with Virginia State Police on a “safety investigation” regarding the crash, which involved a coach bus crashing into six other vehicles that had slowed down for a work zone.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media that the bus driver is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from China who doesn’t speak English and who got his commercial driver’s license in New York in 2024.
“This is exactly why we are holding states accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English. If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus,” Mr. Duffy posted.
At a press briefing on Saturday, NTSB board member Thomas Chapman said, “we are still assessing the driver’s language proficiency.”
The driver has been identified as Jing Dong, 48, a resident of Staten Island, New York, who was injured in the crash, according to WJLA-TV.
The NTSB has not said what caused the bus to crash.
The wreck happened around 2:35 a.m. in the southbound lanes of I-95 near mile marker 146 and Exit 143, which heads to Garrisonville Road in Stafford and to Aquia. A work zone was in place on the highway at the time of the crash.
At the briefing, Mr. Chapman said that “due to the work zone, the right and center lanes of southbound I-95 were closed and the left lane remained open for traffic. A traffic queue had formed … and the motor coach failed to respond to the slow and stopped traffic ahead.”
Virginia State Police indicated that charges are pending against Mr. Dong, but didn’t say how the crash occurred, according to SILive.com.
Mr. Chapman said, “we will not be determining the probable cause of the crash while we are on-scene, nor will we speculate about the cause.”
He also said that “it seems fairly clear that if there was any braking, there wasn’t much because of the speed and severity of the collision, but too early yet to know exactly what was happening aboard” the bus.
The bus hit a Chevrolet Suburban, which then hit an Acura SUV and four other vehicles.
A 25-year-old Massachusetts woman in the Chevrolet died, as did the family of four, also from Massachusetts, who were in the Acura SUV that caught fire, according to SILive.com.
The victims in the Acura have been identified as Dmitri Doncev, 45; Ecaterina Doncev, 44; and their children, Emily, 13, and Mark, 7, according to Boston’s WBZ-TV. The family was headed to a wedding in South Carolina at the time of the crash.
’No English, not even a word’
Members of their family told WBZ in a statement that “words cannot adequately express the pain and sorrow felt by their family, friends, church community, coworkers, classmates, and all who had the privilege of knowing them. Their absence leaves a void that can never be filled, but their memories, their love, and the countless lives they touched will remain forever in our hearts.”
In addition to the dead, 44 people were injured in the crash, three of them critically, Virginia State Police spokesman Matthew Demlein said, according to Fredericksburg’s Free Lance-Star.
Authorities have not said whether the three people with critical injuries were in any of the nonbus vehicles involved in the crash or whether they were on the bus with about 30 passengers, according to Richmond’s WTVR-TV.
“I felt the big crash, and I leaned up. As he was hitting stuff, it pushed me into the other seat in front of me, and it was like hard to get up after he just kept crashing into stuff,” bus passenger Wayne Tobin told WTVR.
The bus, operated by North Carolina-based E&P Travel, was going from New York to Charlotte. The company had a satisfactory rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as of April 3, according to Washington’s WUSA.
In August 2024, another E&P Travel bus crashed on U.S. Interstate 85 in Lexington, North Carolina. That tour bus struck a traffic control vehicle after failing to slow down, according to a report by North Carolina officials cited by WUSA.
Other drivers, including truckers, have called attention to the issue of people who cannot speak English acquiring commercial driver’s licenses. In an American Transportation Research Institute survey last year, English language proficiency was the third-highest concern among the drivers surveyed.
“There’ll be truck drivers that come to our warehouse to pick something up. There’ll be two, three truckers, two drivers in a truck, and two of them speak no English, not even a word,” refrigerated trucking company owner Mike Kucharski told The Washington Times last October.
Last August in Florida, an illegal immigrant from India named Harjinder Singh made an illegal U-turn on Florida State Road 91, striking a minivan and killing all three on board.
Despite failing his test in Washington state 10 times, Mr. Singh was able to obtain a commercial driver’s license from Washington and California, despite his immigration status and probable lack of English proficiency. He was using his California license at the time of the crash.
Florida tried to sue Washington, along with California, over the issue, but the state’s complaint was shot down by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The federal government has also taken action on the issue. In June 2025, the Transportation Department, in concert with an executive order from President Trump mandating truck drivers be proficient in English, rescinded an Obama administration policy relaxing language proficiency rules for commercial drivers.
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer said in a statement at the time that the trade group and the “150,000 truckers we proudly represent strongly support President Trump’s decision to resume enforcement of English proficiency requirements for commercial drivers. Basic English skills are essential for reading critical road signs, understanding emergency instructions, and interacting with law enforcement. Road signs save lives — but only when they’re understood.”
Over 20,000 truckers have been “kicked out of service for failing to meet basic requirements” since last June, the Transportation Department said in a release in May.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency within the department, withheld $40 million in federal funds from California over its refusal to enforce the language standards. California then began complying with the standards in January.
The agency also launched an audit against over 30 states for issuing noncompliant commercial driver’s licenses to nondomiciled drivers. Enforcement actions were sent to 26 states, and the agency withheld $160 million from California and $73 million from New York for failure to revoke those licenses, the Transportation Department said.
Between June 2025 and May 1, over 28,000 of the noncompliant licenses for nondomiciled drivers were revoked nationwide, and over 6,800 training providers were kicked off the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration registry.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.