How CA’s DMV allows deadly drivers on the road

Ervin Wyatt’s history behind the wheel spreads across two pages of a recent court filing: Fleeing police. Fleeing police again. Running a red light. Causing a traffic collision. Driving without a license, four times. A dozen speeding tickets.

Yet the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued him a license in 2019. Wyatt promptly got three more speeding tickets, court records show. Prosecutors say he was speeding again in 2023 when he lost control and crashed into oncoming traffic, killing three women. He’s now facing murder charges in Stanislaus County.

The California DMV routinely allows drivers like these — with horrifying histories of dangerous driving, including DUIs, crashes and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways, a CalMatters investigation has found. 

Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again. 

CalMatters investigative reporter Robert Lewis reviewed vehicular manslaughter cases in California from 2019 through early 2024 to understand how California handles dangerous drivers.

The court records and driving histories reveal a state so concerned with people having access to motor vehicles for work and life that it allows deadly drivers to share our roads despite the cost. 

Officials may call driving a privilege, but they treat it as a right — often failing to take drivers’ licenses even after they kill someone on the road.

• Morgan Gire, Placer County District Attorney: “I don’t think anyone fully understands what you need to do behind the wheel to lose your driving privilege.”

Our key findings:

• Nearly 40 percent of drivers charged with vehicular manslaughter since 2019 have a valid license.
• The DMV issued licenses to 150 drivers less than a year after they allegedly killed someone on the road. 
• Nearly 400 of the drivers charged with killing someone got a ticket or were in another collision — or both — after their fatal crash. 
• The DMV has no record of vehicular manslaughter or related convictions of hundreds of drivers.

Read the full investigation here or check out our main takeaways. Also learn about how we reported the story.

This is the first story in our License to Kill series. Sign up here to get an email when we have new stories.

With Cal Fire’s rollout of updated local fire hazard maps concluded, California property owners who fall into the 2 million acres of “high” or “very high” fire danger areas are subject to a host of building codes and other rules to mitigate the spread of wildfires.

But a proposal for California’s three major utility companies to update their own fire risk maps — which would help impose more regulatory scrutiny and stricter rules for utility infrastructure in high-risk areas — was recently rejected by state regulators.

As CalMatters’ Malena Carollo explains, since their original filing in 2017, the fire maps have been voluntarily updated by the utilities in piecemeal updates. In 2023 the California Public Advocates Office, a state entity responsible for representing consumer interests and ratepayers, requested regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission to require the utilities to update their maps immediately and in their entirety. 

The companies — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — supported the request, which the commission rejected in January. A spokesperson for the commission said its members “cannot comment today on a potential future vehicle about the fire maps.”

The rejection came weeks after deadly wildfires swept through Los Angeles County. In March the county filed a suit against Edison, arguing that there was evidence the company was responsible for the Eaton Fire that killed 18 people.

Read more here.

From CalMatters higher education and workforce reporter Adam Echelman:

In 1961, California passed the “50 Percent Law,” which mandates much of how community colleges spend their money. Most of the state’s community colleges didn’t exist yet and there had never been a James Bond film.

College administrators say the rule is outdated.

In an April 8 report, the state auditor’s office said it agrees. The law requires community colleges to spend 50% of their funds on teacher salaries, with some exceptions. College leaders say the restrictions hamper their ability to spend money on counselors, librarians and other support services that students need.

The audit also said that the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office has done a poor job of enforcing schools’ compliance with the law. 

Teachers say the law is a bulwark against administrative bloat, keeping colleges focused on their educational mission. Over the course of one 10-year span, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office reported that its schools have increased the number of administrators by 45 percent compared to just 3 percent for faculty, although the audit noted that the staffing data contains “anomalies” and “discrepancies.” 

The audit recommended amending the law but not eliminating it.

Former Assemblymember Evan Low and his campaign will pay a $106,000 fine for using a technology-focused nonprofit to pay Alec Baldwin to appear at the politician’s re-election fundraiser and concealing the payment afterward, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission decided Thursday. 

The hefty penalty comes five years after the agency began investigating Low and his relationship with the nonprofit he founded — a probe sparked by CalMatters’ reporting on the ties between Low and the foundation.

• Angela Bereton, FPPC assistant enforcement chief, during a commission meeting Thursday: “This conduct was egregious. There was purposeful action taken to conceal this activity and it wasn’t reported for five years.”

To learn more about Low’s violations, read Yue Stella Yu’s story here.