California leaders look on as vehicle deaths skyrocket

Over the past decade, the number of people killed on California roads has increased dramatically. Nearly 40,000 people died and more than 2 million were injured.

And California leaders have done little about it.

CalMatters investigative reporters Robert Lewis and Lauren Hepler spent the year chronicling how the state allows dangerous drivers to stay on the road with deadly consequences. In the latest installment of their License to Kill series today, they write:

Year after year, officials with the power to do something about it—the governor, the legislature, the courts, the Department of Motor Vehicles—fail to act.

The silence in the face of a threat that threatens nearly every Californian is reprehensible.

Colin Campbell, a writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles, lost his two teenage children after a drunk driver repeatedly crashed into his Prius on the way to the family’s new home in Joshua Tree. He then began advocating for California to join most other states and create a law requiring dragnets in the car for anyone convicted of a DUI.

The ACLU opposed the measure, calling it “a form of racial wealth extraction.” The DMV told lawmakers it could not “complete the necessary programming” for the law.

So the bill was gutted. California couldn’t do something that nearly three dozen other states could.

• Campbell: “Our lives were destroyed that night. If these people’s children were killed by a drunk driver, there’s no way they’d argue against that.”

Steve Gordon, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom tapped to run the DMV in 2019, would not talk about the spike in deaths. He has refused or ignored CalMatters’ requests for an interview.

Read the full story to understand all the ways California leaders have failed to act. And catch up on the rest the License to Kill series here.