The Brief

At a California State Senate committee hearing this year, the director of Caltrans, Tony Tavares, showed a simple chart that might have caused the assembled lawmakers some alarm.

It was a series of black bars representing the death toll on California's roads in each of the past 20 years.

Fatalities had been falling until 2010, when the bars started getting longer and longer. A blood-red arrow shot up over the growing lines, charting their rise, as if to make sure nobody could miss the more than 60% increase in deaths.

“We are working to reverse the overall trend,” Tavares said.

No legislators asked about the chart. No one asked the director what, exactly, his agency was doing about it.

Over the next three hours, the Senate Transportation Committee members asked instead about homeless encampments along roads, gas tax revenue, gender identity on ID’s and planning for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

The chart presented by then-CalTrans Director Tony Tavares at the March 11, 2025 Senate Transportation Committee hearing.

The committee chair said it was the legislature’s first informational hearing on the state’s transportation system in more than a decade. Yet only two senators — both Republicans with little legislative power in a state controlled by Democrats — even asked about dangerous driving, one following up with questions about a deadly stretch of road in her district and the other about a small California Highway Patrol program to target egregious behavior behind the wheel.

Over the past decade, nearly 40,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been injured on California roads. As an ongoing CalMatters investigation has shown this year, time and again those crashes were caused by repeat drunk drivers, chronic speeders and motorists with well-documented histories of recklessness behind the wheel. Year after year, officials with the power to do something about it — the governor, legislators, the courts, the Department of Motor Vehicles — have failed to act.

The silence, in the face of a threat that endangers nearly every Californian, is damning.

California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the nation. Here, DUI-related deaths have been rising more than twice as fast as the rest of the country. But this fall, a state bill to strengthen DUI penalties was gutted at the last minute.

When it comes to speeding — one of the biggest causes of fatal crashes — again the legislature has done little. For two years in a row, bills that would have required the use of speed-limiting technology on vehicles have failed.

Lawmakers did pass legislation a couple years ago that allows the use of speed cameras. But it’s just a pilot project in a handful of jurisdictions.

Marc T. Vukcevich, director of state policy for advocacy group Streets For All, considers it a win — but a modest one.

“This shit is not enough to deal with the size and severity and the complexity of the problem we have when it comes to violence on our roadways,” Vukcevich said.

Erika Pringle, at right, embraces Allison Lyman, whose son died in a collision, during a candlelight vigil as part of The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims at the Capitol in Sacramento on Nov. 16, 2025.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom declined an interview request. Last year, he vetoed a bill that would have required technology that alerts drivers when they’re speeding.

The state DMV, which is under his authority, has wide latitude to take dangerous drivers off the road. But it routinely allows drivers with extreme histories of dangerous driving to continue to operate on our roadways, where many go on to kill.

Steve Gordon, whom Newsom chose to run the agency in 2019, won’t talk about it. He has declined or ignored CalMatters requests for an interview.

The agency simply released a statement from him in March, after our first interview request, touting modernization efforts that reflect an “ongoing commitment to enhancing accountability and transparency while continually refining our processes to ensure California’s roads are safer for everyone.”

Neither Newsom nor Gordon has announced any major changes since then.

How a bill to fight DUIs fails in Sacramento

For a brief moment earlier this year, Colin Campbell thought the state might finally do something about the scourge that changed his life one night in 2019.

A repeat drunk driver slammed into his Prius on the way to the family’s new home in Joshua Tree, killing his 17-year-old daughter, Ruby, and 14-year-old son, Hart.

Campbell, a writer and director from Los Angeles, began advocating for California to join most other states and create a law requiring in-car breathalyzers for anyone convicted of a DUI.

At first he was encouraged when the bill coasted through two legislative committees. But then came the roadblocks.

The ACLU opposed the measure, calling it “a form of racialized wealth extraction,” according to a Senate Public Safety Committee report from July. In California, people forced to use the devices have to pay about $100 a month to a private company to rent them, though there’s supposed to be a sliding fee scale based on income.

Then the DMV told lawmakers that it could not “complete the necessary programming” for the law, citing possible technology delays and costs of $15 million or more.

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

Campbell called the sudden reversal a shameful example of forsaking public safety for bureaucracy.

“Our lives were destroyed that night,” he said. “If these people's children had been killed by a drunk driver, there is no way they would be objecting to this.”

Even if the law had passed, DMV data suggests that California judges would have mostly ignored it.

State law says judges have to require in-car breathalyzers for people convicted of repeat DUIs. Last month, the DMV issued a report reinforcing what a similar report laid out two years earlier. Judges across the state ordered the devices just one-third of the time for repeat offenders. In 14 counties, they ordered the devices less than 10% of the time for second-time DUI offenders. The counties are: Alameda, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Los Angeles, Madera, Mono, Plumas, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Sierra, Tulare and Yuba.

DMV officials did not answer questions about what, if anything, the agency was doing about it.

We reached out to all 14 counties’ courts. Only eight responded to questions.

Chris Ruhl, executive officer for the Glenn County Superior Court, said the court is looking at local changes.

“Given the light CalMatters is bringing to this issue … the Glenn Court will review its current DUI sentencing practices,” according to a statement.

Glenn was one of a number of counties — including LA, Alameda and San Luis Obispo — that also suggested it wasn’t their judges’ responsibility to issue a court order. They said they only needed to notify the DMV of the convictions.

However, the law is clear: It’s the judge’s job to order the offender to use the device, said Jerry Hill, the retired Bay Area Democrat who wrote the bill.

When he worked in the Capitol, Hill said he also saw little urgency to rein in intoxicated driving.

“If you ask any legislator, they are going to say it’s a terrible, terrible thing,” he said.

But he said committee chairs and staff members who set the tone and write analyses often shied away from increasing criminal penalties.

“That’s where we see a lack of understanding, in my view, of the devastating effect of drunk driving in California,” he said.

Lawmakers say next session could bring change

A number of lawmakers said they are aware of the carnage on our roadways and plan to do something about it this coming legislative session, maybe.

Sen. Bob Archuleta, a Democrat from Norwalk who sits on the Transportation Committee, lost his granddaughter to a drunk driver just before Christmas last year. He said he recently met with representatives from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and is considering possible bills.

“This is not a Republican issue, a Democrat issue, an independent issue — or political issue. This is a life-saving issue,” he said. “We should all take it as seriously as the family that lost a loved one.”

Democratic Assemblymember Nick Schultz of Burbank said he is considering introducing at least one measure next year to address loopholes and weaknesses in state law.

Schultz, who started his career prosecuting DUI cases in Oregon and now chairs the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, said he is weighing several potential measures that would address issues CalMatters highlighted in its reporting this year, including lengthening license suspensions after fatal crashes, lowering the bar to charge repeat drunk drivers with a felony, strengthening breathalyzer requirements and making sure vehicular manslaughter convictions get reported to the DMV.

“People are tired of seeing the needless loss of life on our roadways,” Schultz said. “There’s no way to legislatively make someone make the right choice. But what we can do is create an incentive structure where there are consequences for bad decisions.”

In the absence of more leadership at the state level, road safety advocates — many of whom joined the cause after losing a loved one to a preventable car crash — are taking it on themselves to try to force change. They’re meeting with lawmakers and officials, holding public events, telling their stories.

At far right, Fumiko Torres speaks about losing Rayanna Diaz while standing alongside other family members during a candlelight vigil as part of The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims event at the Capitol in Sacramento on Nov. 16, 2025.

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Allison Lyman stands at a table honoring her son Connor, who was killed in a traffic collision, before the start of a candlelight vigil as part of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims at the Capitol in Sacramento on Nov. 16, 2025.

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Fred Greaves

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Jennifer Levi started working with MADD after her son, Braun, was killed in May while he was out walking with friends in Manhattan Beach. She said they’d only recently relocated to the area after the family home burned down in the Palisades fire, destroying “all of Braun’s pictures, videos from when he was born.”

The driver who killed her son was allegedly intoxicated and had a prior DUI arrest.

“The worst day of my life is now my life’s work. I will not stop until California changes,” Levi said.

In the months since her son’s death, Levi said, she’s met with any officials or influential people she could — current and former lawmakers, district attorneys, local council members, a lobbyist, and members of the media. Among the changes she wants: to make it easier to charge repeat DUI offenders with murder when they kill someone, to make fatal DUIs a violent felony and to increase penalties for hit-and-run fatalities. As CalMatters reported in October, California law often treats drunken vehicular manslaughter as a nonviolent crime with minimal time behind bars.

Levi calls her push to reform the system “Braun’s Bill.”

Many grieving families share a similar goal: for those they lost to be remembered by a state and society that seem indifferent. That desire was on display last month during an event in Sacramento to mark the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

On a cold Sunday evening in mid-November, after a break in the rain, dozens of relatives of people killed in car crashes gathered on the dark steps of the state Capitol for a candlelight vigil. They fought to keep photos on posterboards upright in the gale-force winds. Family by family, they ascended the steps, stood above a display of orange cones lit with strands of white lights and addressed the onlookers, talking about their loved ones and what was lost — children left without their mother, mothers without their children, a wife left without the love of her life.

“Every day I live and I wake up and I pretend like I’m happy. Every day I wish my stairs would make noise. I miss being called mom,” said Angel Dela Cruz, whose 17-year-old son Edward Alvidrez Jr. was hit by a truck while riding a dirt bike in Madera County in 2022.

“I hope we all get justice,” she said.

The event ended with a moment of quiet reflection and a prayer before the families put away their pictures and walked off, the Capitol behind them locked, silent.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

If state lawmakers decide to continue funding California State University’s efforts to improve graduation rates, they should tighten oversight of how those dollars are spent, California’s nonpartisan fiscal and policy adviser said Wednesday.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reported that while CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025 had mixed success at the end of its 10-year run, a lack of detailed financial reports clouds lawmakers’ ability to assess which interventions were most cost-effective. As CSU works to implement new and more wide-ranging criteria for student progress, the analyst’s office calls for lawmakers to more closely track future spending across the 22-campus system.

LAO recommends state lawmakers “continue to monitor whether existing programs are meeting their objectives cost‑effectively and make adjustments accordingly. While a new CSU graduation initiative likely would provide some state benefits (such as enhanced economic mobility), those benefits could be less sizable or less significant than the potential public benefits of other state programs.”

Funding for the graduation initiative grew from roughly $50 million in 2016-17 to more than $400 million annually by 2024-25, an LAO analysis found, backed by state and tuition revenue. Systemwide, Cal State had more success in increasing two-year graduation rates for transfer students and four-year rates for freshmen, but saw slower progress on six-year freshmen and four-year transfer rates. Achievement varied widely among campuses.

LAO’s interviews with campus administrators suggested the graduation effort had several positive effects beyond raising completion rates, including better Cal State data systems and heightened public scrutiny that held campuses accountable for students’ success.

But LAO found that CSU campuses struggled to balance multiple graduation objectives. Cal State also has not provided enough data to the state about how much campuses spent on specific activities like tutoring, academic advising and mentoring, LAO noted. Data on students’ use of those services also wasn’t available for Graduation Initiative 2025, though recent CSU survey results suggest use of counseling and career services is relatively low.

CSU is now launching a new and broader framework for measuring student achievement, which includes not only graduation rates, but metrics like placement into jobs or graduate school and post-graduation earnings.

If lawmakers opt to back those goals, LAO recommends they explicitly link funding to a single objective and set a formula for how the money is divided among CSU campuses. LAO also calls for campuses to release consistent annual tables breaking down spending and student utilization rates.

If you've ever wanted to conjure up a scenario between yourself, Han Solo and the crew from Zootopia, you're in luck.

The Walt Disney Company has reached a licensing agreement with OpenAI that brings Disney characters and images to Sora, the artificial intelligence company's short-form-video generator. According to a joint statement released by the two companies, the three-year licensing agreement will allow people to create and share videos using "more than 200" animated characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.

Notably, the statement adds "the agreement does not include any talent likeness or voices."

As a part of this agreement, Disney will invest $1 billion into OpenAI and become a "major customer" of the company.

Fairplay, the nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to reducing children's screen time, issued a statement saying the Disney OpenAI agreement "betrays kids."

"OpenAI claims children are prohibited from using Sora, yet here they are luring young kids to their platform using some of their favorite characters. Shame on the 'House of Mouse' for aiding and abetting OpenAI's efforts to addict young children to its unsafe platform and products," the statement reads.

Disney and OpenAI say in their statement that the two companies share a commitment to protecting the rights of creators while "maintaining robust controls to prevent the generation of illegal or harmful content."

Sora users will be able to take advantage of the agreement starting in 2026.
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