Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety

The Senate Public Safety Committee and Senate Transportation Committee will now come to order. Good afternoon. I'm Senator Jesse Arreguín, the Chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee. I'm joined by Senator Dave Cortese, the Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee. Welcome you all to today's hearing.

We'll be hearing from all of the panels on the agenda prior to taking general public comment. And we appreciate you attending today and participating in our hearing. Once we've heard from all the panelists, we will move to that public comment period at the end of the agenda.

And for my colleagues, we will be hearing from all the speakers on a particular panel before we open up for questions or discussion on that panel. We will maintain decorum during the hearing, as is customary, and any individual who is disrupted may be removed from the hearing room. But with that, I want to provide some opening comments and turn over to Chair Cortese as well.

Good afternoon and thank you everyone for participating in and joining us for today's joint hearing with the Senate Transportation Committee on the state's DUI and traffic safety laws and policies. Our committees have convened today to hear about and discuss research, laws, and policies related to DUIs and traffic safety more broadly.

To put this in context, in 2024 there were over 17,000 fatal or serious injury crashes in the state of California. Although this number reflects a continued annual decrease in fatal and serious injury crashes over the last few years, California's rate of fatal and serious injury crashes is much higher than it was a decade ago.

With respect to alcohol involved traffic crashes, 1,355 people were sadly killed in the state in 2023, a decrease from the year prior, but one that also trailed national decreases. But any death is unacceptable and must be prevented. While there are important figures, they do not account for the crashes resulting in serious injuries or deaths.

They do not provide a comprehensive picture of how dangerous our state's roads and highways have become. That's why we've convened this hearing today. Although the focus of today's hearing is on impaired driving, we'll also examine reckless driving, distracted driving, and road design.

That's a critical piece of this as well. As as part of today's presentations, the panels will outline policies designed to make our roads and highways safer that have either been enacted or that they believe should be enacted. And because of the joint nature of this hearing, we'll hear from a diverse array of panelists.

We'll hear from an attorney who will lay out existing laws related to DUI and related offenses, a researcher who focuses on traffic safety, law enforcement officers who enforce our laws, and a judge who oversees the criminal docket and administers judicial trainings.

We'll hear from victims advocates, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, each speaking to specific perspectives regarding the criminal legal process as it relates to DUI enforcement. We'll also hear from representatives of the administration, specifically DMV, the Office of Traffic Safety, and the California Highway Patrol.

Our goal in convening this hearing is to provide a strong foundation with respect to both the public safety and transportation elements, which is why it's both committees, of DUI and traffic safety laws and policies. And as you know, there are several bills that have been or will be introduced that relate to some aspect of today's hearing.

And soon we will both be tasked with evaluating those proposals and making decisions about the kinds of changes that we would like to see to our current laws. My hope is that today's hearing will help inform those discussions and ensure that we have a strong foundation of law to protect our roads and to protect our Californians. So with that, I want to thank the panelists for joining us today and turn it over to Chair Cortese for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Chair Arreguín, first of all, for your cooperation and, you know, committee's excellent work in helping us get prepared. Of course, along with Senate Transportation Committee. I too want to express my gratitude for our panelists for taking the time to testify today.

And I want to thank all of our Committee Members for attending and participating in the hearing. I do think this is a more focused, hopefully, obviously a more focused approach in terms of panelists testimony and cooperation with Q and A than we've had in other kinds of informational hearings on our side of the ledger here in Transportation.

You know, even though we've had some broad hearings about overviews of public transportation. You know, the question really becomes if our philosophy to some extent is that every member of the public has some ownership stake in a very few assets in this state and one of them is our roads, then the question becomes how do we ensure that tens of millions of Californians are able to use those roads to get to and from safely, and particularly to get home safely.

I think it's a foundational question that guides much of the work we do in Senate Transportation Committee. As we've heard, we've heard some statistics already. There were over 17,000 fatal and serious injury crashes in California in 2024. 17,000.

I could tell you, for those of us that attend the Caltrans Memorial every year, just the number who are killed among our own workforce is astounding and heartbreaking. We can all agree that deaths and injuries on the roadway are unacceptable. But achieving zero fatalities and serious injuries is as complex as our transportation system itself.

Fatal crashes are caused by a range of unsafe driving behaviors. I think we're all fairly aware of that. Distracted driving, which has probably become a bigger thing with the advent of technology and devices. Speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, and DUI, whether that be driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

And while these decisions are unacceptable, the fact is people do make bad decisions, especially when they're impaired. And we must account for that when designing our transportation system and developing transportation policy, and I would say accountability as well.

Significant progress on traffic safety will take a holistic approach focused on infrastructure, human behavior, and oversight of the transportation industry. Fundamentally, we need a comprehensive response rather than isolated interventions. Here in California, we've adopted something called the safe system approach.

And this approach provides a proactive, data driven framework that emphasizes systemic prevention, while acknowledging that individual decisions also affect safety. An example of that, designing roads that encourage safer driving behavior with high quality safety countermeasures can help protect both drivers and vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians.

Speeding is a major driver of crashes on the road. We must continue to work to lower speeds through infrastructure, road design, speed limit setting, education, and of course, enforcement. While acknowledging the speeding and other traffic safety challenges contribute significantly to fatalities and serious injuries on the road, I want to note, of course, that DUI will be a major focus of this hearing.

Hopefully that's not a surprise to anyone. We have a lot of work to do to reduce and prevent alcohol and drug involved crashes in California. Additionally, it has come to our attention that there may be serious gaps in our court and administrative processes and serious gaps in connectivity. Today we have an opportunity to hear from all the stakeholders involved in this process to get to the bottom of why some drivers are falling through the cracks. And we believe that's happening.

We will discuss the process for driver's license suspensions and whether suspensions effectively keep drivers off the road. We're also going to hear an update from law enforcement on what they're seeing on the ground. I think we all have our own observations.

I could tell you what mine are coming back and forth on Highway 5 or Highway 80 from San Jose. But we will hear from the professionals who are actually on the ground. And we appreciate the Public Safety Committee's help with all of that. We will discuss recidivism and what we can do to reduce it.

And importantly, we're going to hear from a victim of traffic violence to understand the very real loss that families across the state endure every day. Our panelists represent a cross section of balanced perspectives to help us understand what's going on, what is or isn't working, and what options we have for policy change.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that nearly two dozen bills have been introduced or will be introduced on these topics to date this year. In the interest of time, I will ask Members to keep their questions and comments to the presentations, as we will not be taking action on any bills today.

We are not going to have any kind of opportunity at the outset for Member comments, but certainly encourage anything that you need to present during the Q and A period of any of the panel discussions.

And again, hopefully we can keep that moving, keep it concise, but at the same time, get the substantive information out that we desire to get out. Our first panel is going to provide us with an overview of DUI and traffic safety laws and research to help guide our broader understanding of these issues.

As with every panel today, we will hear from all all the speakers on a particular panel first and then open it up to questions from Members. Panel 1 is an overview of DUI and traffic safety laws and research. Up first we have Thomas Nosewicz, Legal Director of the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code.

Mr. Nosewicz, you may come forward. We've set this up with an expectation that opening comments from panelists from presenters would be six to seven minutes maximum. Keep in mind you will have an opportunity to expand, you know, on question and answers.

There most certainly will be questions, and we would therefore hope you keep it closer to six minutes than seven. Second, I'm going to introduce everyone on this first panel and then just indicate the order that I have them in. Although we don't, we're not bound by that necessarily if you have something different in mind in terms of sequence.

We're going to hear from Stephanie Dougherty, Director of the California Office of Traffic Safety, and we're going to hear from Dr. Julia Griswold, Director, UC Berkeley SafeTREC. With that, you are welcome to begin in whatever order you wish. Mr. Nosewicz, did you want to start?

Yeah. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for having me today, Members and staff. I'm Tom Nosewicz. I'm a member of the legal staff for the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, which is a state entity that was established in 2020 to make recommendations about improving criminal law to the Legislature and the Governor.

The committee's goals are to improve public safety, make a better system for crime victims, while reducing unnecessary incarceration and addressing racial disparities. Your colleague Senator Wiener is on the Committee, as is Assembly Member Elhawary. So I was asked to prepare a brief overview of laws related to DUI in California.

And there's a three page handout that I hope you all have received. And this is the short version. So, you know, I'll try to make it as clear as I can. You know, I think to set the context first, it's important to realize that DUI is one of the most common offenses leading to arrest in California.

There's about 100,000 arrests for DUI every year. It's about 14% of all arrests in the state. You know, the vast majority of these are for misdemeanor offenses. And of people who are convicted of DUI, 75% have no prior DUI conviction. So we're talking about misdemeanor first time offenses.

And that's important because California has a system of escalating punishments for DUI offenses where the key questions are, are there any prior DUI convictions and was anyone injured. And this is sort of sets the matrix that's in the chart here on page one.

So, you know, for that most common offense, the first time DUI with no injury, it's a misdemeanor that the person can receive up to six months in county jail. Now, the vast majority of people, more than 90%, receive probation and they're going to receive less jail time than that, if any at all.

And for a first time DUI of no injury, the judge has the discretion, is not required to, but can order installation of ignition interlock device. And there's also mandatory classes that can be three or nine months, depending upon some of the aggravating circumstances of the offense, if there are any.

And to immediately complicate things, what can also happen with a lower level DUI is with the prosecutor's consent the defendant can plead guilty to what's called a wet reckless driving conviction, which is a conviction for reckless driving where there is some intoxication.

The penalties are less severe than for the misdemeanor DUI, but it counts as a DUI conviction if there is a subsequent DUI that the defendant commits. And the court also has the ability to order ignition interlock device there. And there's mandatory classes that aren't as long. And that's a very common resolution we see for these cases.

And the other thing that I think is key for thinking of the first DUI of no injury, it's a misdemeanor, an extremely common misdemeanor. But unlike almost all other misdemeanors in California, it's not eligible for misdemeanor diversion unless the person is eligible for military diversion. So it's excluded from almost all diversion programs in our state. Okay.

So as I said, the offenses all escalate from there. So if it's your second DUI, the minimum jail time increases, the classes. I'm sorry, the maximum jail time increases, the length of the classes increases, and the court now has to order ignition interlock device on the defendant.

And we see a similar pattern with third and fourth DUI. And the fourth DUI is the first time that a defendant could be charged with a felony. And if they're convicted, they could face up to three years in county jail and have to do at least 30 days of that. If there's injury...

Now, everything I'm talking about now is if there's no injury. If there actually is injury, the offense is a wobbler, meaning it can be punished as a felony at the prosecutor's discretion. And you're facing up to three years in state prison. Again, mandatory classes, and there's also mandatory ignition interlock device.

And again, the penalties escalate for first, second, and third DUI of injury, topping out at up to four years in state prison if it's your third one. So in addition, and that basically takes us to the first page. Don't worry, we're going to move quicker. There's also a number of sentencing enhancements that can apply to these offenses.

If you have a minor in the car, if there are multiple victims, an injury is caused, if there's excessive speed, or if you refuse a breathalyzer. This will all add additional time to those periods of incarceration that I already mentioned. In addition to these criminal punishments, there's also license suspension regimes built into the law.

So there's going to be likely to be an administrative suspension by the DMV as soon as someone is arrested that lasts for at least six months. It can go higher with some aggravating circumstances. And a court will also suspend the license for at least six months upon conviction.

You know, there's a lot of wrinkles and complexity to that, but that is the basic regime. The other thing that happens when someone is convicted of DUI, they're required to be given what's called a Watson advisory.

This comes from a case People against Watson. And it tells the person that if they drive drunk again and someone is killed, that they may be able to be convicted of second degree murder. So that's, you all may have heard the term Watson murder. That's a little bit where it comes from.

And the thing I want to conclude with, those offenses where someone is driving while intoxicated and kills someone else. So there's four offenses here. The first, and this is all on the bottom of page three, if anyone's following along. The first offense is vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

So this is just, you know, driving while intoxicated and someone is killed. That's a wobbler, meaning it's up to the prosecutor about whether to prosecute it as a misdemeanor or a felony. If it is prosecuted as a felony, the sentence is up to four years in county jail.

Now, if there is gross negligence while intoxicated and someone is killed, that becomes a 10 year state prison sentence that the person can face. And then if you have a prior DUI related or some other specified offenses, the gross negligence vehicular manslaughter becomes a 15 to life sentence in prison.

And the Watson murder is just treated as ordinary, for lack of a better word, second degree murder, also with a 15 year to life prison sentence. So that's a very quick overview. There's of course, more to this story, but I hope that helps sets the stage with the current law a little bit and look forward to any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next witness, please.

All right. Good afternoon, Committee Chairs and Members. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of today's panel. My name is Stephanie Dougherty. I am the Director at the California Office of Traffic Safety. As quick background, the California OTS is the designated state highway safety office for the State of California.

And as part of our programs, we administer behavioral safety grant funds that are made available to states through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In collaboration with our partners, we are working towards a shared goal that everyone, no matter how they travel, will arrive at their destination safely.

Today I wanted to share briefly some data on traffic safety trends in California and some overarching approaches to enhancing safety. As previously mentioned, over the last decade at both the national and state level, we saw an increase in traffic fatalities and serious injuries, including pandemic era spikes.

In 2014, approximately 3,100 people were killed in traffic crashes in California and almost 11,000 people were seriously injured. In 2021, that number increased to over 4,500 fatalities and over 18,000 serious injuries in California. And those increases were despite a significant decrease in daily vehicle miles traveled during the pandemic.

Since 2021, we are seeing traffic fatalities and serious injuries from starting to trend downward. In 2023, fatalities in California decreased by 11% from the prior year and serious injuries decreased by almost 6.5% compared to 2022. And while not certified yet, the data for 2024 and 2025 are showing a continued downward trend.

So while we are encouraged by this progress, we know there is much work left to be done. Impaired driving can include the use of alcohol and or the use of more than one drug, including cannabis, illegal, and prescription drugs. Generally, alcohol impaired crashes have accounted for almost one third of fatalities in California over the last several years.

In 2021, of drivers who were killed in vehicle crashes and tested, about 50% of those drivers tested positive for drugs, both legal and illegal. We also know that speeding can increase the risk of crashes and the severity of injury.

And those crashes can involve a driver who is racing, who is driving too fast for conditions, or who is driving in excess of the posted speed limit. In California, speeding related driver traffic crashes accounted for about one third of fatalities in 2023.

And we know that people traveling outside of vehicles, people walking, biking, and rolling, are more vulnerable to speed and at greater risk of fatality or injury in a crash. That risk increases significantly at speeds above 20 to 25 miles per hour.

So when we look at overall fatalities, bicyclists and pedestrians combined represented about a 31% share of all fatalities in 2023. And while these statistics provide an overall view of traffic safety, I did want to take a moment to recognize that behind each of these numbers are families and friends and communities who have been impacted by a traffic crash.

And so we want to honor, and we recognize every person who has lost a loved one or who continues to feel the life altering impact of a traffic injury or crash. We also note that many of these crash factors are intersectional. So we know that speed impairment, distraction, drowsiness, and other factors can often play an overlapping role in a crash.

For example, 2023 data shows that speeding drivers in fatal crashes were alcohol impaired more frequently than drivers who were not speeding at the time of crash. Addressing this risky driving behavior requires coordinated and systemic action.

In 2020, California demonstrated national leadership by being among the first states to formally adopt the Safe System Approach. This approach provides a proactive, data driven framework to advancing safety. In October of last year, the California State Transportation Agency and California Health and Human Services Agency released a Joint Policy on Road Safety.

This policy is grounded in public health principles and it sets an aspirational interim target of reducing fatalities and serious injuries in California by 30% by 2035. This joint policy also includes a new State Priority Safety Corridor Initiative that targets high crash corridors through enforcement, education, and infrastructure improvements.

We've launched safety corridor activities at three locations already, and additional corridors are anticipated to launch later this year. Thinking holistically about California's Impaired Driving Countermeasure System, the focus there is really on preventing, detecting, and deterring impaired driving.

Educational programs, training for law enforcement to detect signs of impairment, enforcement activities, toxicology, prosecution, administrative sanctions and licensing programs, and other activities are all essential elements of our impaired driving strategies. In federal fiscal year 26, OTS awarded about $46 million in alcohol or drug impaired grant funding to state and local subrecipients.

We also know that managing speed is an essential part of the Safe System Approach. In California, we are advancing policies that advance this systemic approach to safety. In January of 2024, CalSTA's Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force was released and included a set of recommendations to address safety and to address speed management.

Since delivery of that report, legislation has been enacted that grants jurisdictions certain flexibilities in how speed limits are set, and it also authorizes pilots for speed safety cameras in various jurisdictions. At the state and local level, agencies are addressing speed through road design and infrastructure treatments, through enforcement, education, technology, and data driven planning.

And as we think about implementing these systemic solutions, we know it's really important to engage the public and to help inform and encourage safe driving behaviors. In a 2025 public opinion study that we conducted, we heard that Californians perceive speeding and aggressive driving, drunk driving, and distracted driving while texting as the biggest safety problems in California.

We also heard that the public is supportive of factors and strategies to increase safety for all road users. Those include promoting safe and reduced speeds, improving street design, expanding awareness of other modes of traveling, and supporting communities to plan for safe streets and public areas.

So these survey results really point to our continued and collective need to promote a shared sense of responsibility for safety on our roads. In closing, I want to take a moment to thank and express appreciation for our partners at all levels, federal, state, local, and community level, who are working with urgency to end roadway fatalities and serious injuries. We appreciate your partnership and look forward to continued collaboration.

Thank you. Next presenter, please.

Good afternoon. So are my slides showing? Okay, great. Thank you for the opportunity to present research on effective evidence-based strategies for reducing traffic fatalities and serious injuries and DUI. My name is Julia Griswold and I'm Director of the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center at UC Berkeley. Can someone advance this slide? Okay.

Safe System recognizes that human error is inevitable and focuses on systemic solutions to reduce crash forces. There are many interventions that can move us toward our goal of zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries, but there is not an equivalency in the impact across interventions.

The Safe Systems Pyramid is a tool that prioritizes policies and strategies that have the greatest population level impact and require the least individual effort.

Research indicates that while strategies at the base of the pyramid require broader systemic changes and higher initial investments that yield the greatest population level impacts, making meaning the greatest number of fatal and serious crashes averted. For example, socioeconomic factors can include development of housing near transit and land use policies that support the reduction of vehicle miles traveled.

These policies can help reduce the exposure to risk on the transportation system. Active measures near the top of the pyramid include seat belts and stop signs, and they rely entirely on human compliance. Next slide. Speed plays two critical roles in safety. First, it increases crash likelihood by narrowing a driver's field of vision and increasing stopping distance.

Second, if a crash occurs, speed exponentially increases the risk of fatal injury by increasing the crash impact forces. For pedestrians, fatality risk more than doubles when a vehicle speed increases from 20 to 30 miles per hour. Next slide. Research identifies four highly effective systemic approaches to speed reduction.

First, speed is often portrayed as a driver behavior problem, but the design of a road gives cues to a driver about what speeds are appropriate, and these cues can be misleading. Self-explaining roads are designed to encourage drivers to select an operating speed in line with the posted speed limit rather than relying solely on posted speed limits.

Implementing countermeasures like narrowed lanes, median refuge islands, and textured crosswalks naturally encourages drivers to adopt safer speeds. However, given the state's vast roadway network, additional approaches are needed to improve safety more quickly. Selecting safe speed limits is also important.

The Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force identified a number of concerns with the current approach to setting speed limits where observed driver behavior and not safety largely determines the speed limit, though a number of bills have made incremental changes to include other factors in the process.

Context is an important consideration for speed limit setting because we cannot rely on drivers to know how the energy levels created by moving vehicles may exceed the injury tolerance of road users, particularly when roads are not designed in a way that helps drivers understand how fast it is safe to drive.

Setting safe speed limits is most effective when used in conjunction with infrastructure changes, but it does help on its own. Intelligent Speed Assistance, or ISA, is a latent safety vehicle technology found at the middle of the pyramid that supports drivers in maintaining the set speed limit.

Passive ISA provides visual, audio or haptic cues to the driver when they exceed the speed limit, while active ISA either uses resistance in the accelerator pedal or limits engine power to slow a speeding vehicle.

A recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety survey found that more than 60% of U.S. drivers would accept a passive system that issues warnings when they exceed the speed limit, and about half would accept a system that actively slowed the vehicle. I'll say a little more about ISA in a moment.

Lastly, speed safety cameras are a latent safety measure because they do not require decision making or action by a law enforcement officer. Speed cameras are currently used by 350 communities in the US and studies have shown that they can reduce fatal and incapacitating injuries by as much as 39%.

Initial results from San Francisco's pilot indicate an 18% reduction in the share of drivers exceeding the speed limit at the camera locations. Next slide, regarding ISA fleets present a promising opportunity for introduction of ISA to California having potential to improve worker safety, reduce employer liability, and improve overall road safety.

New York City DOT was one of the first implementers of ISA and they found a 64% relative decrease in time spent speeding for retrofitted vehicles and the DOT and the city is now expanding this to all of their new fleet purchases that are not for non emergency purposes.

So called super speeder laws are another approach that two states and the District of Columbia have taken to prevent recidivism by requiring the devices for the most egregious speeding offenders. But these laws are too new to understand their impacts. Next slide for DUI reduction Deterrence theory relies on the certainty, swiftness and severity of quantity consequences.

General deterrence aims to deter the General public from committing crimes by showcasing the consequences faced by others. In 2020, roughly 3/4 of DUI drivers in fatal crashes had no prior DUI conviction. This statistic highlights the importance of General deterrence in preventing the first offense.

Effective General deterrence strategies include periodic sobriety checkpoints, which are part of the certainty element of deterrence per se, BAC reduction also addresses certainty. Utah saw a 19.8% reduction in their fatal crash rate in the first year after reducing the BAC limit to 0.05, and administrative per se suspension communicates the swiftness of punishment.

While effective, these strategies belong to the top level of the safe systems pyramid, requiring greater individual effort. Research shows that DUI statues tend to have the greatest impact among those least likely to drive, drink and drive, with less effect on those with the highest propensity to drink and drive.

So a focus on punitive action aimed at specific deterrence may not have the desired level of effect in reducing recidivism. A number of studies have noted that a small portion of chronic DUI offenders are so called hardcore or problem drinkers who are not rational actors.

Ignition interlock devices or IIDs serve as a systemic technological intervention that physically interrupts the chain of events leading to a DUI. Studies have shown that DUI is most effective when issued to all DUI offenders, reducing recidivism while still providing necessary access to transportation.

Another important consideration for deterrence is that DUI and unlicensed driving are associated with hit-and-run. A repeat offender may weigh the uncertainty of being caught after fleeing against the certainty and severity of consequences if they stay and are cited for driving drunk or on a suspended license.

Hit and runs are most problematic because they can lead to delays in care for injured victims. Next slide. I'm going to finish up by returning to the safe systems pyramid which helps us to prioritize the tools in our toolbox. The most impactful long term safety solutions are those that shift away from reliance on perfect driver behavior.

Prioritizing systemic interventions such as self explaining infrastructure, automated enforcement and technological guardrails like iids are shown to provide significant population level benefits. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your opening presentations. I'm going to open it up immediately to Committee Members. Obviously with both committees here we have a number of folks who will participate, I believe, and then I'll try to do my job and then if something gets left out, hopefully chime in with a question or comment.

Toward the end I saw Senator Menjivar asked to be recognized first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Griswold, on the slide that you provided on certain policy considerations and things that work, have you done or is it too early to done any review of Utah's law that recently passed and adding that note to the driver's license that showed like you cannot sell as a possible or the effectiveness of something like that?

I know it's kind of like the first in the nation, so maybe too early to look at.

I would have to look that up and get back to you.

Okay, thank you. That was it. Mr. Chair.

Okay. Senator Archuleta.

To my colleague, I believe the state of Utah has that on their license.

That's what I was asking.

Yeah, it's there. And if you're in a bar, they won't serve you.

I was just asking if there was an effective. If we've gauged how effective that is.

But that's a great idea. If I may, Mr. Chair,

Then if you have a question, just go ahead and direct to the panel. Senator.

Okay, the. You started off, Doctor, obviously, speed kills. And you know, I'm a victim. My granddaughter was killed, DUI. And so my interest is somewhat selfish.

But like any other family out there that's lost so many, we have people from MAD that are here and other victims that are watching and that are here. So all of us are trying to find a solution to keep people from drinking and driving. And we just said speed kills, obviously.

But some of the issues that are before us are we being strict enough to get people to realize that if they drink and drive and they take a life, it's going to cost them in all sorts of ways, whether it be jail time, restitution, family issues. So I'm, I put a Bill on the table. It's SB907.

That's going to be looked at as we, as we move along. And I think we're going to have the support that everybody's waiting for here in California. And with the number of people you mentioned, 3,000 people killed every year, I think that was 2014. And granted there's some reduction, but it's amazing how we've waited so long.

And I'm hoping that this Committee, Public Safety and Traffic, that we bring it to the surface so all of us can see and understand that this is an epidemic. 3,000 lives here. We're saddened because we lost seven in our battle there in Iran. But this is 3,000. Imagine that. So what a comparison.

But first timers, the issue is about having that breathalyzer in the car. What's the problem with that? First time? Let's do it. I know some of my colleagues put that on the table in the Assembly and didn't get passed.

So now we come back and now it's up to the judge, they say, but I guess we're looking to you, the experts who've done the studies and so on. Yes, the roads can be changed, signs can be put up. We've got to educate our children. But we also have to let our judges know that we're behind them.

That I know the judges I've spoken to and said my hands are tied. This is what it says I got to let them go. And I'm sure that there's stories out there that someone has served a year instead of 56 months instead of three years. It goes on and on. So I'm glad you're here.

So my question to you, doctor, is what's the answer? What would you recommend if you were sitting up here and you had the gavel and the power?

Well, I think some of the physical improvements to infrastructure and changing how our vehicles operate are probably the thing that you can't avoid if you're on the road. Whereas criminal law, it depends a lot on enforcement, on cops being there to see what's happening. So that's where I would start.

But obviously it's a little bit outside of my expertise here. I think really the other experts would give a better answer. But we do have a wide array of existing prison sentences for the behavior you're describing as well. Anyone else, please weigh in and respond.

Yeah, so I think the general deterrence approaches could likely be defined in this refined in the state. And what you do want to do is, you know, the largest portion of DUI drivers involved in fatal crashes are having with their first DUI. So, you know, recidivism is not the issue there.

I'm not sure what the best refinement is going to be for state policy in terms of the most egregious offenders, the chronic DUI offenders who don't respond to the legal measures that are taken against them.

I found an interesting study from Florida that looked at drivers who participated in an IID program and the drivers who were who committed three or more violations on their iid. So that's two or more lockouts within a four hour period. So they couldn't drive the car because they were trying to drive when they were drunk.

Those drivers were referred to alcohol use disorder treatment, and evaluating that program, they found a 32% reduction in recidivism with those drivers. Wow. Yeah. So when you're talking about systemic solutions, you also want to look at the upstream factors in those people's lives.

You know, they may have a serious addiction problem, and if you don't address that, it's not going to change their driving behavior.

Good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All right. Senator Blakespear.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate it. Dr. Griswold, when you said that some of the people who are driving drunk are not rational actors, that the deterrence has been there, but they're still making this decision to drive drunk. So it does seem to me like one of the most important things would be the in car breathalyzers.

And so I wonder, I mean I was just reading a summary of the proposed Bill AB 1830 from Assemblymember Petrie Norris. It appears that it didn't make it out of one of our committees committees last year. Do you have an understanding of what is the argument against this Bill?

Because to me it seems really common sense to do that. And so if you know what the argument is, if you would have a response to that, just so I could understand the landscape of, of that legislation.

My understanding of the argument is just from my discussions with the Committee staff. So that's okay. Outside my.

That's adequate. Do you want to share, is it a freedom like someone else might be driving the car or somebody's going to be?

I think it's partly about the cost of the devices for people who can't afford it.

Okay. Okay. Anything else to say on that? Because it does seem like that could be really effective, particularly when we're trying to stop the non rational actor. Okay. Okay. Thanks very much.

Senator Seyarto.

Thank you. I just want to start with a question really quick. Several times you mentioned first time drug or driving, drunk driving offense, you had mandatory classes. So I've seen some mandatory classes. They wind up offering them online.

Basically they're, you know, some of them consist of a bunch of things about, you know, gory pictures and things like that. What about the first time offender?

Is there a process where they are evaluated to see if they actually have an alcohol problem so that they can go there before the third offense and be treated or they get identified as not an alcohol problem, just a behavioral problem and so we can have a little bit faster ramp up for anything beyond that first one. As far as deterrence is concerned, that

evaluation is supposed to occur as part of the DUI classes. I think there are big questions about the effectiveness of the current classes and obviously in the size of our state and the number of people administering them. I'm sure there are some that are better than others.

And that is actually one thing that the penal code Committee where I work recommended is that we see what is going on with these classes because so many people are doing them. There doesn't seem to be, you know, evidence of what exactly is most effective. But current law provides for that type of evaluation. You know, what becomes of it. I'm not sure.

I think our efforts would be better spent identifying people that have an alcohol problem. We do have people that get DUIs. They use that as an excuse for their DUI. Oh, I recognize I have an alcohol problem, I'll go do treatment and I'll be better. When they don't have an alcohol problem, they were just being irresponsible.

And that needs to be identified on that first offense. Because if they've had a first offense, that probably isn't the first time. So we need to kind of drill down on that for the first offense. And is it the DMV who is trying to do this or do they refer them to the courts?

I think it's the contractors who actually do the classes, though. You know, the DMV folks can probably give you a better answer to that than me.

Yeah, I would probably lean towards adjusting to a system where we actually identify if the person that has been, has been arrested for drunk driving on that first offense, whether they have an alcohol problem or not, or a drug abuse problem, whatever it is, and that they need to be referred to treatment, because if that's the case, then their license should be suspended for at least the amount of time it takes them to go through that treatment.

We are certified that they're off of alcohol or drugs, have been rehabilitated in that manner. The road design issues, anybody? SB78, the report is out due from the in January of 2027, and it's trying to do exactly what you were talking about, identify the most dangerous roads that we have.

And the idea behind that is that we actually, outside of our transportation budget, we actually identify what needs to be done and we budget money to get those things done and get them done sooner than later.

So are they working with, are you going to be working with DOT on that, or how has that been working out, that study?

So my office is not directly involved in the SB78 study. We focus primarily on the behavioral safety side of things, but we definitely work in tandem with our partners across the system. So from an infrastructure side, coordinating with education, coordinating with enforcement, coordinating all the parts of the system.

So we look forward to being able to see and work later on that report and looking at where there's opportunities where we could certainly layer in behavioral countermeasure strategies to accompany any needed infrastructure or road design improvements and treatments.

Thank you very much. And the last question I have is regarding the kind of the mechanical things that they put onto cars. You know, the, there's the breathalyzers. But people have also talked about speed governors. I'm a little concerned about the speed governors.

And the reason I do that I'm concerned is as you're driving down the freeway and you have a truck or semi going 75 miles an hour and somebody is trying to get on the freeway and they're blocked off if they don't, if they can't either accelerate or decelerate to get out of that situation, they slam on their brakes and then we have a big pilot behind them.

So if they are looking at speed governors, are they having a minimum, a minimum speed at which the Governor actually kicks in? Because I can see that being effective for people that like to go 100 miles an hour, but not for people that are trying to go 80 because the truck's going 75.

And they need to maneuver themselves into a position of safety.

Yeah. So what you're talking about is, what I was discussing is the intelligent speed assistance, the active version of that. And generally those systems do have override capabilities so that you can temporarily increase your speed for overtaking or situations like that when you're merging onto a freeway. And so are they I activated because.

Yeah, you're going to fumble around for the controls. Oh, I need more speed, I need more. No, that's not going to work. So those concern me. So they have to be designed in a way that, you know, they're for the very higher end speeds that nobody should really be going.

Well, you know, those very high end speeds that no one should be going vary based on the context. So, you know, on a freeway, you don't want someone, you know, you pop it out at like doing 80 and 90 on the freeway right now, 85 maybe. And.

But then on a city street late at night with poor lighting, someone could be going, you know.

60 in a 30-mile-an-hour or 50.

And that is going to have a significant risk of fatality to a pedestrian that they may encounter and not be able to see.

Especially the ones that are confused about whether they need to stop or not as they're driving their bikes through an intersection. So I think I've asked the question questions I need to ask. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Richardson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we've heard, Ms. Griswold, I think reluctantly told us that the reasons why it may be that these ignition interlock programs haven't been more implemented. I was wondering, Ms. Dougherty, excuse me, if I butchered your name there.

Can you share with us how much money federal funds have been put to the DMV to help us to implement the offender ignition interlock program. And let me let you first answer that question.

So we provide our federal funding to a range of alcohol and drug impaired activities, including education, enforcement, training for Law Enforcement Officers, vertical prosecution, toxicology, a whole host of systems and projects within the DUI countermeasure system.

We have not provided grant funding to DMV to support IID program implementation, but we have provided grant funding to DMVE to support other driver safety and traffic safety research projects and programs.

Do you think it's possible to consider this program in light of some of the testimony that you're hearing today?

I mean, that is certainly as part of our annual grant application process. We do a call out for applications. We program our dollars towards those demonstrated traffic safety needs. We have to be mindful of federal eligibility rules and allowable uses for those grant funds.

But that is certainly something that is part of our competitive grant process that we would be able to consider.

And will you?

Certainly. We work every year with over 500 state and local subrecipients.

So we are responsive and interested when any potential applicant or potential grantee comes to us with a robust problem identification and a set of behavioral safety crown and measure strategies that fit within our allowable uses. We are certainly open to having that conversation and doing that rigorous evaluation.

Okay. So Mr. Chairman, maybe we want to reach out to the DMV to see if they'd consider providing the information or courts or whoever would be appropriate to provide that recommendation to her organization so they could consider adding this ignition program to their into their toolbox of potential grants. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Just additional point of clarification is we've had some legislation that did not survive. I don't know who the author was. It's not important for making the point during the last year, during the first part of this session, and it may be that, you know, the direction. Ultimately, I don't know, Senator Richardson.

Obviously we'd have to check into that would require statute to direct that to happen with any certainty. But so far I think we're we have one try up and one try down on that.

I think there's been a couple questions, including the speed Governor issue, where we've had some activity in the Legislature, you know, attempting to go down that path that didn't make it to the governor's desk thus far. So I'm sure the debate will continue.

Just from my view on the Transportation Committee as a chair, we expect we'll see more of those things coming forward in the future. Other questions or comments? Yes, I'm going to ask a couple too, but go ahead.

Okay, real quick, DMV, we haven't talked about the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And they'll be up on the next panel.

Oh, okay, good.

Thank you. One of the interesting things for me, and it really is just part of the search for answers and information, is a lot of the information that we have and you've presented today. Thank you very much.

This has been good and useful and productive, but it's kind of set forth in, you know, in percentages, statistical percentages, if at all, you know, in terms of real context. I note that in one of the background papers I have for this hearing that I think mirrors some of the data we heard in the presentation.

Ms. Dougherty, regarding the improvement since I think you said 2019, but certainly since 2021, in terms of a reduction in the overall numbers of fatalities, it looks to me in the background paper, though, like there was a 29% increase from 2013 to 2021. I don't know what, and I don't know if Mr. Nosewicz knows.

I don't know what that means in terms of numbers. And further, we wouldn't know, at least from this background information, what that means in terms of the percentage that we're DUIs, for example, as opposed to distracted drivers or whatever other data that's out there.

So I guess, one, I'm not necessarily looking for confirmation of the way I'm interpreting this. Please feel free to correct me. I didn't do that great in probability and statistics in college.

But if we had a 29% increase over those years, 2013 and 2021, whatever that numerical figure is, presumably in the thousands, and we came down a little bit since then, is it safe to say we're still significantly higher since 2013 than we were historically in the state of California in terms of traffic fatalities? Does anybody know.

A little bit of information on that.

Okay, great. You might need your microphone on or maybe we need assistance from.

Thank you. So I can provide this to staff after. This is all publicly available information too, but you know, the crash fatality rate going back to 1995.

So looking at, you know, 30ish years of data, we're about where we were. This is accounting for population, so 100,000 people. So, you know, our state has grown considerably since then. But, you know, you know, accounting for that, the DUI involved fatality rate is about what it was. It's about 4.75 per 100,000 people in the state.

The non DUI involved fatality rate has gone down from 8.5 in 95 to 6.72 in 2021. So again, we're not.

I know you asked about sort of just the raw numbers, Senator, but I think the rate is helpful here to sort of show, you know, there has been a decrease looking at that long period of time accounting for population.

But it has started to go up more recently, particularly during COVID And you know, my colleagues have more recent data than I do, but I guess I have a little bit more of a historical data. And this is just pulled from as. Again, I'll share it with staff.

So I know it's a little bit hard to visualize when I'm just saying it, so it might be more helpful in a chart I can share.

Yeah, that's helpful additional information. Thank you. And again, maybe you can confirm what I'm hearing you say at least as to the DUI side since 1995, that on a per 100,000 basis, we haven't improved, have not improved or reduced the number of DUI related fatalities on a per 100,000 population basis.

That's correct. Though it got worse. It got better. If you just sort of take those snapshots, we happen to be at about the same place. There's variation within that period of time. And I think part of the story as well is, you know, combining alcohol involved fatalities and drug involved ones.

And we've seen a lot more drug involved fatalities in recent times. So if we were to just separate the alcohol involved rate, I think there would be some improvement, but I don't think that's really appropriate because we're worried about impaired driving, whatever the cause. So that's, that's why it also makes sense to lump them together.

Yeah, I think if you're saying we're concerned about the outcomes and anything we can do to improve them, the specific, you know, the specific area of abuse is less important than what have we done historically.

That's 31 years of presumably effort and attempt to bring down the number of DUI fatalities that on a per 100,000 population basis have not over that time, I understand it's ups and downs, but over that time has not led to a reduction.

We're still at 4.75% with a larger state, which going back to the human element of it and please push back. I'm not here to make an opening or closing argument or presentation, but it seems to me then wrapped up in those numbers with a larger state, we have a whole bunch more tragedies occurring. It's a percentage 4.75.

And one could argue at least we haven't gone up over the last 36 years, 31 years. But one can argue that we have gone up in terms of the amount of human loss significantly. If you apply that same percentage over the population, is that fair to say? Okay, yeah, we gotta get those numbers.

When you talk about you started to say data we pulled from and you didn't really finish your sentence.

And that's in the reason is the reason I'm asking about that I picked up on that was listening closely, is because it hasn't been easy as a chair of the Transportation Committee on the Senate side, and I don't think my Assembly counterpart would mind if I, you know, sort of imputed this on her experience as well.

Because we talked about it hasn't been easy for us to get data on any number of issues like this.

And so any help you have, you know, sort of, you know, finishing those sentences or letting us know or giving to us after the hearing, how if it's not going to be directly from DMV or directly from the Justice Department system, you know, obviously Public health has some of this data, but what, what data do you depend on and where can we get that data quickly?

I mean, understanding that we have bills coming through and you know, Senator Archuleta alluded to that we've had a couple comments about a number of bills coming through. I think I said that during my opening comments.

And then we have a week or two or three weeks ultimately, as those bills are in print, to vet them, you know, against whatever data we have or don't have. And to the extent we don't have good data, we're not getting cooperation from agencies in terms of producing data. It's a, it's a public policy frustration.

So let me get that off my chest. But in that context, what would you recommend in terms of us, you know, being able to very quickly get data? Quickly, to me is 10 days.

I think that, well, you know, most of the issues that the Penal Code Committee looks at, we're in a true data desert. So I actually feel like there's a lot of information about DUI compared to, you know, many other of the issues we look at.

And the main thing that the Penal Code Committee looked at was a pretty voluminous report that the DMV puts out. It's got, like, three acronyms built into it, but it's like the Evaluation of the Offender Management System. The DUI Offender Management System. And it. Yeah, right.

And it has the benefit of, you know, more recent data, but also that historical data that I think is, you know, helpful to look at, you know, as the policy landscape has changed, has there actually been progress? What does that progress look like?

And I think there's actually almost an abundance of data that makes it hard to figure out what are the key ones to look at, because, you know, as we talked about with. Are we looking at alcohol involved, fatalities, or drug involved, or drug and alcohol one?

Because that does inform the policy response a little, because IIDs won't work for someone who's, you know, just did meth or smoked too much Marijuana or something like that. And you can also look at fatalities versus crashes.

And I think there is a lot of information from a number of different sources, but the main one we looked at was this big report that I think was. Is generated exactly for the kind of questions that, you know, you and your colleagues are looking at with these bills about DUI in the state.

But it still may be, you know, it may not have exactly the information that you're looking for, despite the sort of abundance of data. I think on the top.

We're willing to take that risk if we get the data. I mean, you know, in all seriousness, we. I feel like we have very professional, you know, analysis going on in our committees.

And then oftentimes throughout the process, you know, some legislation ends up getting looked at by both the committees who are here today, and maybe the Judiciary Committee as well, and then in another House. I know, you know, the process.

I'm not trying to give a civics lesson, but there's a lot of eyes that are developing analysis and can poke holes or make distinctions, you know, in the data. So I wasn't trying to be flippant. I'm just indicating, you know, give us a crack at it.

If we have the data, I think we can wrestle with disparities and make sure we're disclosing those disparities, you know, through the Committee process to, to the rest of our colleagues, some, some of whom aren't on any Committee dealing with this and need to be able to pick up an analysis before they vote on a Bill on the fourth regarding speed or regarding, you know, devices and vehicles and actually, you know, see real numbers that have been vetted by our committees.

So that's the interest. We're not trying to play gotcha. We're trying to play government best practices, not reinvent the wheel. You know, obviously borrow on data that's already being put together or looked at by good people such as yourselves. So anything we can get specifically in that regard would be good.

Really good. I'll share the chart I mentioned. Me and my team were eager to assist, and I'm sure many people are because of the importance of this issue in that vein.

And I'll try to wrap it up here so we can get to any other questions and ultimately to the next panel. But I know we have DMV coming up next, and we'll get a chance to talk to them with similar questions and concerns.

I'm not clear about the public policy intersectionality between what's going on, for example, here on this chart that you were going through with us, especially, especially the last section that you, you kind of referred us to, where you start getting into, you know, various specific penal code violations that may even lead to felonies.

The intersectionality between that and their process in terms of administrative revocations or suspensions or, you know, I, I believe. I don't know. I'll ask the Director when he's up here.

I believe they have the right and sometimes the practice of bringing folks in and having a conversation with them, you know, in the process of exploring remedies on the administrative side, civil remedies, where do we, where do we find the intersectionality between what they're doing and what's happening on the judicial side or on the penal code side?

Well, it's extremely complex, but I think. I think the thing the Penal Code Committee, where I work identified is we want to. There should be a little bit more integration between the two, because I think the timelines were set up a bit aspirationally and didn't necessarily take into account how slow the judicial, the court process can take.

So you can have someone getting an administrative license suspension, that period runs, their license is restored, and then the judge suspends the license again, which may be appropriate. But. But I think it's probably not what was intended when we came up with these license suspension timelines that you sort of have this on and off again, period.

So that's one thing that the penal code Committee in particular recommended. We should have more things in sync there. Aside from that, I think the DUI is an area where we see a lot more enmeshment between the criminal justice criminal legal system and an administrative agency.

We don't really see it with any other offense with, you know, points on your license, driving school and DUI classes and IIDs and things like that. So it's a somewhat unique area with a huge volume that I do think is probably worth.

You know, there's always things that can be improved, but that's one that the penal code Committee identified in particular on the license suspensions. Given how big an impact that can have on people.

On the penal code side of it, given, you know, the variety of things that happened there, having practiced criminal defense myself for about six years, there's a lot of plea bargains that go on. You talked about a wet reckless.

You know, there's things that go on that have in my observation, little to do with the decision on the civil privilege of driving a vehicle with a license in California. In terms of remedies. The judge isn't, he or she isn't making a decision on whether or not it would be in.

It would be prudent to make the road Safer for a 60 day suspension while a lengthy plea bargain is going on. But DMV could do that.

And you know, it seems to me, having worked in on the penal code side, that the penal code has certain minimal sentencing requirements and sort of minimums that occur depending on the severity or the recidivism involved in the violation. While all that's going on, we don't have a corresponding timeline as to DMV picking up the baton.

And in doing their part, if indeed we're going to, we're going to look at things like driver revocations and suspensions as an additional tool to keep our roads safe. Is there anywhere we can get that information or that data? You know, how do we do a side by side?

Well, I'm not sure about that particular question, Senator. Those particular data elements, I don't know if any of my colleagues haven't happened.

And by the way, I want to acknowledge the, you know, investigative reporters CalMatters and such, you know, I assume have taken done it kind of the other way around where they take a particular case study and then back into a timeline of what happened, when did, what did DMV do, When did they do it, what the justice system do, when did they do it?

For public policy across a state of 40 million people, we would have to have bulk data and information, you know, in terms of the sequence of events, not just case by case study, I believe. And that's what I'm asking for.

It may be out there. I'm not aware at the moment, but I think the, and I apologize for dominating. It's all right to let somebody else ask. But I think some of the concerns you're raising go to one of the things the penal code Committee recommended, which was allowing diversion for some first time DUIs.

Because the criminal system doesn't necessarily seem like the best place to decide who should get treatment at what dose and what rate in other states, and many states allow diversion for these offenses, are able to do that in a more effective way where we see equal if not better recidivism rates.

And then all the process you're describing, the cost that that is to have prosecutors, public defenders, judges and that whole apparatus. And what the Committee recommended was allow diversion, but also allow those diversions to be used essentially as a count, as a conviction if there is another dui.

So you sort of balance all the different concerns and given the huge volume of people going through court for a first time dui, there'd be big cost savings that we could maybe use for some of these other solutions or more targeted treatment for folks with subsequent offenses in collaborative courts or similar situations.

So a bit off topic, but I felt like it was in the vein of what you're bringing up, Senator.

It's on topic and I appreciated the. I think it was Ms. Griswold that was talking about sobriety as a remedy. What's the ultimate remedy as far as recidivision for a DUI? If somebody's sober, they're not going to be committing that crime. They might commit some other crime. They're certainly not going to commit a dui.

Sobriety is sobriety. And we know that folks that are in program that actually embrace the program, meaning they work through 12 step programs, et cetera. Alcoholics Anonymous and their equivalent fellowships are run at about a 40 to 50% sobriety rate, which kind of tracks your numbers of, you know, 35%.

I think you said reduction in DUIs among people who are in those programs. The others aren't successful, they don't stick with it and that's that.

But again, I don't know where it's one thing for a judge to say, you're going to have to bring me back proof that you showed up at 10 weeks worth of meetings and the person shows up and gets their slip every week versus the possibility that DMV could withhold the privilege of driving for a longer period of time until they're certain that sobriety has actually taken hold or not.

And, you know, we don't have that information here. I don't know where to get that information. But we'll pick up the discussion with the DMV panel when they get up here. You're welcome to say anything else that you want to do to respond to me or to any of the other questions before we conclude

I just have one additional point thinking about upstream solutions. So the ones that are at the base of the pyramid is if we have alternatives to driving available to people, they will be less likely to drive and drive while under the influence or drive recklessly.

Waymo is very happy to hear you say that. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Well, you know, I hope they might also choose transit or walking or a bicycle, what you're saying.

Yeah, I was being flippant. I didn't mean to do that. Apologize. Well, thank. Thank you all for being here and we'll dismiss this panel and get on to the next panel. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for knowing who you were on the second panel while I was fumbling around to get my agenda pages turned. So, this panel will allow us the opportunity to discuss administrative and court processes for DUI, vehicular manslaughter, and other driving offenses. And the first speaker is Steve Gordon, Director of California Department of Motor Vehicles.

And we also have the honorable Lisa Rodriguez, Judge of the San Diego County Superior Court. Would very much appreciate having you both here for an issue of this gravity. So, we'll give you your opportunity to make opening statements. The previous panel tried to stick to six to seven minutes. If you can do that, that's great.

But we will have an opportunity, obviously for question and answers. Thank you.

Great. Good afternoon. Steve Gordon, Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. I hear there's some questions for me. I look forward to those questions in a moment. I've been with the Department for about six and a half years and we'll talk about some of the things that we focused on and specifically to this particular program.

The DMV plays three roles here. Where we have mandatory actions, these are things that are in statute that we have an obligation to take verbatim and act on the driver's privilege. There are court-ordered actions, which we'll cover in a minute.

And then, there are the administrative actions I think you guys have touched on a moment ago, where the Department has an admin per se process where we actually take an administrative action in advance of anything the judicial process takes. And we'll be happy to cover that in a moment as well.

We also, just from a scale perspective, we receive about 2 million abstracts from the courts every year. So, a lot of detail. Our job is to get those applied to the record. Those are court ordered actions or mandatory actions but making sure that they are properly applied to the record.

In addition to that, we also have our own administrative action section, which is, and we're going to call them, the Driver Safety Division, Driver Safety Team inside the Department. And they host examinations and hearings where an admin per se person who may request a hearing.

Not everybody does, but if you request a hearing, this team will actually host that hearing and then they'll evaluate whether or not your driving privilege should be suspended or some other alteration to that program occurs. But that's a team that is inside the Department of Motor Vehicles, works in parallel with the judicial system.

You know, one of the jobs, I guess, you know, I'm responsible for is, I was appointed, you know, six and a half years ago to try to focus on real ID and focus on a lot of other things in terms of scale about the Department, making sure that we can serve all 40 million Californians.

And one of the things that we focus on within the driver safety team is to make sure that those same improvements we're making across the Department are applied to driver safety. And I'll admit that wasn't the first team we attacked because we were worried about lines, real ID, and a bunch of other things that were occurring.

But over the past three years, we've done organizational changes, we've done system changes, we've done process changes to make sure that, in fact, that if somebody comes into the process, they are properly processed. And most importantly, I think as Dr. Griswold mentioned, they are processed in a timely fashion.

You know, just about a year, year and a half ago, when some of these changes were taking effect, you know, driver's safety hearing, someone who had an APS case could potentially have their hearing held maybe 170 or longer days away from the time of the admin per se presentation from law enforcement. Today, that now is routinely for people who request a hearing under 70 days and most of those are in 60 days.

And if you don't request a hearing, it's done in near real time. There's a due process period in there of 10 days. So, those are all done in 10 days, because we want to make sure that we move quickly.

As Dr. Griswold said, we, we want to make sure that in fact that our systems and our process support quick and immediate action. Because the goal is to make sure for people that need to be taken off the road, their licenses should be suspended or revoked depending on the situation.

We want to be able to do that quickly and effectively. And there are other cases if you have a physical or mental problem, somebody perhaps is recovering from surgery or something like that, and their doctor wants them back on the road and have proof that they can drive safely.

We want to make sure that they are not unduly held from returning their driving privilege. So, it works both ways, but we want to make sure, especially because we get more DUI sort of cases, want to make sure those are administered very, very quickly. And there's still much more to do.

I know it sounds like I'm saying everything's solved and we waved a magic wand over this, but there still is a lot to do. There still is a very paper-oriented process. There's the interface between the courts and the DMV, that I'm sure we'll want to talk about. And I really wanted to just make one other point.

I know that there was a question about data, Chair, that we have a DUI report published on our website. I believe some of those reports were actually shared, I think with the staff. Forgive me, I'm from calling people out here, but I think we did try to share that data.

If there's some data that's missing that you would find helpful, we'd be happy to make sure that that was made available to you. And there is also, I think, an APS dashboard that is available on our website. There's some delay in getting some of that stuff out there, you know, the review process in government.

But the point is that data is collected, it's researched by our PhDs and they do a fairly good job of making sure that the information is correct. And I believe it also ties to average. It has data on average days of conviction when the conviction is reported versus, you know, APS. We're aware of an APS.

So, all that data is there. Again, we'd be happy to talk with you offline about what that data means and how to use it, if that was of interest to you. And with that, I will thank you and I appreciate hearing from you with questions when my time comes.

All right, thank you, Mr. Gordon. Your Honor.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Committee Members, Chairs. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this joint hearing. I'm Judge Lisa Rodriguez, as indicated, from San Diego County, and I'm also the Chair of the Judicial Council's Criminal Law Advisory Committee.

Before I was a judge, I was a prosecutor for about 19 years. So, I really can't even estimate the number of DUIs and traffic-related offenses that I prosecuted.

I handled DUIs, I handled driving on suspended license, evading when I became a felony attorney, assault with a deadly weapon, where the deadly weapon was a car, homicides, gross vehicular manslaughters, and then as a judge, I have also handled misdemeanor readiness calendars, taking plea deals, sentencing people, handling revocations, and then tried as a judge many cases, including DUI homicide.

So, in other words, I have about 30 years of experience in dealing with traffic-related offenses. As you know, the Judicial Council doesn't take a position on policy. So, I'm really here to give you sort of background information on how the court processes cases with respect to DUIs and other traffic-related offenses.

And since the California Constitution created 58 different counties, each county handles these things sort of differently. They address them, they process DUIs and traffic-related offenses in their own way. And of course, the cases themselves are different because we have infractions, we have misdemeanors, and we have felonies, and all of those have different consequences.

And I think, as was alluded to earlier by the first panel, we have vehicle code violations that are traffic related, but we also have penal code violations that are traffic related. And this sort of makes reporting to the DMV a little bit more challenging.

In my county, for instance, we have a traffic court that handles infractions, and so, all of that gets reported to the DMV as just part of their daily duties. It's much more challenging when we're talking about misdemeanors and definitely when we start talking about felonies that are penal code related or when a person is sentenced to prison.

So, I'm going to try to give you sort of a general overview of what occurs in the courtroom during prosecution and after a disposition has been reached, focusing really on our misdemeanors and felonies. My comments should be pretty broadly applicable, while acknowledging there's going to be this variation depending on the county and their local case management system.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about case management systems in a moment. At the end, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have or follow up on any inquiries.

So, I think the first thing that's most important to know is that not all arrests for traffic related offenses result in the filing of a criminal case. And it is not until the prosecutorial agencies file a criminal case that the court becomes involved. If there's no case, we are not involved.

And then, once the case is filed, then case number is going to be very different than the arrest report number. So, those two things are not always consistent. And a case might not be issued by the prosecutorial agencies for some time after the arrest occurs. Sometimes it can be months later.

And then, once somebody actually does get into court, then a conviction can be obtained either through a plea or through a verdict by trial. And so, we don't really have a date to tell you about when something is going to resolve. It can last for quite some time.

For instance, most misdemeanor cases at the first court date, they may enter a plea of guilty. That does not happen with felonies. And for misdemeanor cases, they might, when they plead guilty, have a sentence and a probation hearing right then at the time of the conviction. That also does not happen with felonies.

And for both misdemeanors and felonies, it might take a while to get to this position. The case has natural things that have to happen—readiness conferences, the trial itself, there could be motions, search and seizure motions. So, it's really not a set time frame for when things are going to happen.

And it can be at any one of those junctures that I've talked about that somebody could enter a plea. And it's because of this that you can see in that DMV report that Mr. Noseiewicz referred to that that the median date for adjudication is about 210 days from the date of arrest.

And so, that kind of creates that lag for getting the information to the DMV about what somebody's consequences might be from the court. Again, once you have a misdemeanor, quite often we deal with those probation conditions right up front. And we can't do anything until there's actually that conviction.

So, at that time, the license suspension will be ordered, an IID may be ordered, the referral to the treatment program, and then, all of that gets transmitted to the DMV. For felony cases, statutorily, a defendant doesn't get sentenced until 20 court days after the entry of a plea unless there's some waiver.

And that date can also be continued past 20 days.

The court at the time of felony sentencing is going to decide based upon rules of court and statutory considerations if somebody is going to be granted probation or denied probation, if there's going to be a prison sentence, and then what the ramifications might be from each of those things.

And it's, again, at that point, that information gets transmitted to the DMV. And the penal code recognizes that, as does the vehicle code. There's a difference between just conviction and conviction in sentencing. And the vehicle code says that we report to the DMV upon conviction unless there's not a sentence at the same time.

Then, we report once we have the conviction and the sentence, and that's within five days after that. And so, again, there's that other lag time that you might be seeing between the time of arrest and when things get reported. So, what happens after there is the conviction and the court makes the orders?

Well, at that time, we make the orders, the court clerks document them. In my county, we are still using like old fashioned paper. We just now in the last month went to a fully automated system.

And so, once we do that, this actually—once we put that, give that information to the Court Clerk, then they actually will put into the system. Many times, like in my county, we have a Business Clerk who takes the information from the Court Clerk Room, puts it into the system.

And some counties, it's an automated system between the technology we have for the clerks and the DMV, sometimes they have to go to a separate application to put that information in. Now, this is great technology. It has improved dramatically.

Back when I was a baby lawyer, they actually did it all by writing, and then we mailed it to the DMV, and the DMV would look and see if it's correct. And sometimes they'd mail it back to us and then we'd mail it back to them. The technology is becoming much and much improved.

And so, that information is getting passed along at a much better rate and it's much more consistent. But, you know, there are still things that we have to worry about.

For instance, for vehicle code violations, there's this automatic flag that will come up for most of them. For penal code violations, because most penal code violations have nothing to do with the DMV, we don't have those automated flags.

And so, sometimes that information can get lost unless the Court Clerk accurately documents it and the judge accurately orders it. And then, that gets transmitted over to the DMVs. I know there's been a lot of talk about IIDs, the ignition interlock devices, and you should know that for a first time DUI, that is entirely permissive.

Same thing with some of the license suspensions. The length of it depends upon the crime and whether or not the court actually has to order it. Some things you might not even know there could be a license suspension connected with it. And so, it's not getting those automated flags. The court has to be sure to order it.

But you should also know that once we get to a second time DUI, that even if the court didn't order it, a person can't get their license back until after they have the ID and show proof to the DMV.

And Vehicle Code Section 23575.3 is what kind of oversees that process for getting that information to the defendant and how they proceed in order to get their license back. And we know that this may have been an issue in the past about getting that information to the defendant, as well as to the DMV.

And it's one of those things that now we are being sure that we are working on and following up on it. But again, I want to make sure you know that until they get that IID information on those second time and other priors, that there's no license being returned to a person.

So, I want to conclude so that you can ask questions. We are reviewing our processes. We want to make sure that we are clear on our reporting requirements. We are checking to make sure we're instituting manual reviews of non-vehicle code violations.

We're going to be doing additional training on reporting and ordering requirements for both judges and clerks. And we're reviewing the coding of case management systems to make sure we're doing those automatic reports to the DMV.

Again, that variety of case management systems and how courts operate does make this a complex issue because we have essentially 58 different counties. But we do know this is a priority and we continue to address it.

You know, in my county, we have a misdemeanor guidebook, kind of lists out everything that are mandatory orders for DUIs and other driving related offenses. And it is complicated. We actually have tables in there about IIDs and what kind of orders have to be made.

And most of the conditions that we actually have to order are found throughout the vehicle code. It's not all in one place. It's not really consistent.

So, as practitioners, we are very glad that the legislators are looking at these things and are addressing and exploring methods of clarifying the interaction of the authorizing statutes to make it clear for judges who are ordering these conditions and clerks who are transmitting the information to the DMV.

And that's why we're really glad to be here participating in this hearing. And we look forward to continuing to working with the DMV and maintaining these open lines of communication. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that. Again, thank you both for making the time to be here and for your presentations. I'll call on Senator Archuleta because he was.

Thank you both for being here.

On the previous panel. And then, we'll go to Blakespear and Seyarto.

Okay, thank you, Judge, for being here. What a great opportunity for us in this panel and a committee, this joint committee. As you may have heard, that I lost my granddaughter to a DUI.

And we have people in the audience from MAD and a lot of people that are just so concerned about we here in California lifting up these victims and acknowledging them by being a little more tougher on laws. And that's the bottom line.

And you heard me say that the judges that I know and friends I have, they say, hey Senator, my hands are tied. So, Judge, do you feel that your hands have been tied? Do you feel that your communications from DMV is not as it should be perhaps?

Because we heard one of my colleagues, I thought was a great idea, is putting a tag on the license. I don't know what that would do to DMV and the system, but that's a great idea. Utah does it. And I think that I will follow and coauthor that one in a minute.

But what can we do to go ahead and get these individuals off the street, stop drinking and driving, and if they would just see that California is not going to put up with anymore. What are your comments on that, your Honor?

I think it would be amazing if we could magically make people stop doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Of course that would put me out of a job. But we can't take a position on policy here for the Judicial Council.

We will apply any laws that the Legislature comes up with and we're always happy to provide technical assistance, but I really can't give you any suggestions in my capacity.

Are you able to handle, on the DMV side, the communications over from the judges that someone has committed to first, second, third, even fourth offense, and these licenses should be removed?

Yes.

And they should not be driving on our streets.

Completely agree. As I mentioned, we already received in excess of 2 million abstracts from the various courts across the state. So, we are applying those today. Those come to us frequently. I mean at 2 million, they're not all coming at the end of the year. Right?

So, we get those on a daily basis, and we apply those to the record. So, I think we can handle those. I think the question often is what happens if there's a gap, someone who doesn't have a driver's license, an out of state driver, you know, a California driver in Nevada, Nevada driver in California.

That's where, you know, the process is a bit different where you get maybe perhaps a little more paper oriented, the so called, what we call an X record when we receive them in our system. So, there are things that are edge cases, but I think for the general case, the information transits quite well.

Thank you.

All right, we'll go to Senator Blakespear.

Yes, thank you. Thank you to both of you for your presentations. I'm from San Diego, so it's nice to see a local here. I'm happy to have the Director of the DMV testifying today about this topic.

There are a number of safety bills that we run in the Legislature that seem like they run into this consistent answer from the DMV which is that you're doing an upgrade to your technology and your systems and you can't possibly take on anything new.

And so, there are emerging things like this topic which, you know, a CalMatters series has been showcasing as an area where California is deficient, resulting in all these bills. And as we know, last year, there was a Bill that also had to do with the breathalyzers in cars and making sure.

And the DMV's answer—apparently, I've now received some information that the answer was that there just wasn't the funding or technology to implement the changes.

And so, and I am also running a bill on E-bikes, and we've had E-bikes bills in the past that the DMV hasn't wanted to tackle that subject, which is —clearly, needs to have more engagement from the DMV.

And so, I'm wondering if you can just speak to this topic that we are talking about now, but the DMV's willingness, your willingness, to be able to roll with the current needs to be able to get your systems and your computer systems in order so that we can do the work of the people of the state.

Yeah. So, Senator, great question. I mean there's about nine questions, but good question. The challenge that we have in the Department is that many of our systems and if you think about the E-bikes, I know this is off topic, but if you go about the E-bikes, that system is 60 years old.

So, making changes in there at the same time we're trying to modernize that system, which is happening later this year, it's, you would argue, not a wise investment. Plus, the system is completely inflexible. Driver's license is a little more modern, but that's also going through a modernization change that will be happening over the next couple of years.

So, there is always a conflict about making sure that we don't make changes and have to repeat those changes in the next system upgrade.

At the same time, I think there is a case—IAD is a great example of that—where, from where I'm sitting as relatively new to state government is that the existing rules are unnecessarily complex and in conflicts and it requires perhaps this guy, the judge mentioned, it's a very complex set of rules.

So, it certainly would benefit, I believe, from some simplification from the Legislature to make those rules much more comprehensible, much more applicable, then it's easier for us to implement. But it's also more importantly easier for the courts.

It's also easier, I think, for ordinary citizens that are afflicted to be able to actually know what they're supposed to do. So, I think a combination of things have to occur. And I know we've been asked, and I think have been asked to advise on how that might occur because we have a point of view about that.

Not that we're writing legislation, but I think there's some things that can be done to simplify some of the rules that would allow it to be easier to implement, easier to understand, easier to apply.

Yeah, I mean, I would just encourage you to empower your staff to respond to legislative offices and to provide the guidance that you think you'd be able to implement because, you know, we're all up here trying to accomplish the same goals that you are, to make it easier for judges to implement, to make it so safer on the roads.

And to the extent, you know, the relationship can be more problem solving oriented, I think we would all really benefit from that. But of course, those directions are set from the top and we want to be able to make those changes, as needed.

And the other thing I'll just say is I've heard that the DMV has done a good job very quickly and nimbly responding to the need to have transponders in cars and to be able to, to register when a car is on a toll road and changing the position of where it's located and this kind of thing, because the DMV saw that as important.

And so, in some ways, these—and I'm not asking you to comment on that. This is just the lore. Is that the DMV, when they feel it's important, can act quickly. But then, there are these other things that seem to be like really stuck in molasses around like E-Bikes is one.

And then I'm really hoping that on this subject, we're able to break through and have some really good, important, impactful legislation on this topic. But it does take, you know, because the DMV puts up a wall and says this is in appropriations, is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We can't possibly do it.

Our modernization is underway for another decade. You know, basically a no, then it won't happen. So, this is just the reinforcing that the partnership has to be there from the DMV in order for a lot of these things to be successful.

Yeah, I appreciate those comments, Senator. So, just two comments. I don't know anything about the transponder. I would love to hear from your staff what that is so I can go take a look at it. I think the biggest issue here is on the motor vehicle account. You know, there's structural insolvency there.

And so, that also inhibits things that we can do. Because we go, say, great, we're going to go off and modernize this particular system or make these changes, even if they're tactical. We come through Department of Finance, we go before legislative bodies to seek funds and there's no money in the motor vehicle account.

So, there's issues, I think, that are—broadly have to be addressed. But I will take your feedback. And if my staff is just saying no reflexively, we need to fix that. And I will certainly take that as I need to fix that. I'm at the top of the organization.

But I will begin states about the financial side of it is very tricky with the motor vehicle count and the insolvency there and making sure that we can actually make, you know, the right changes in the right order to serve California. There will be some debate about which order things should be done in, but I'm not unilaterally changing the direction of the state. You know, a transponder, whatever makes me feel good. I want to make sure I'm doing the right things in the right order that have the greatest impact.

But thank you.

Okay, great.

And I will follow up with your office.

Okay, thanks very much.

Thank you. Senator Seyarto.

Thank you. And I forgot this part. I always forget to thank you guys for being here today and helping us understand this issue a little bit more and what we can do to fix this or address the problem. You know, my question for the judge and the DMV, what happens, somebody gets a DUI on Thursday night—what happens between Thursday night and when they're their case is adjudicated?

That big space in there. And I've heard numbers like three months and six months, and sometimes it's even longer than that. Are there temporary orders that are put on the person that has been accused of driving under the influence? Because unlike other cases, these are pretty—if they weren't under the influence, they wouldn't get arrested.

You know, if they're testing positive, they're testing positive. And we need to address that behavior immediately. So, how is that accomplished by the coordination between the courts and the DMV?

Would you like me to start? Because we're probably getting it first.

You'll get it. Well, yes, you start and then I'll follow up.

Yeah, right. So, the way that it normally works, Senator, is, you know, the officer on the side of the road will—well, if they're arresting the person, they will fill out a form for an admin per se case that will then get routed to us.

Almost all of the jurisdictions now submit those electronically to us so they will get to us in near real time. Our office will then, you know, open a driver safety case. This is that driver safety division, and we'll take an immediate action.

We'll notify the person who's the offender, and they will have 10 days to determine if they want to request a hearing. And then, within 30 days, their license will be revoked—I'm sorry, excuse me, their license will be suspended.

So, they could come in if they, if they notice this on a hearing, oh, there's extenuating circumstances, whatever it might be, they can request a hearing. And that's the, you know, the average resolution of those is, on average, 7—70 days.

But if they do not request a hearing, and most people do not request a hearing, you know, those things are—once the 10-day sort of period of time to notify us is over with, their license is immediately suspended.

But even that 10 days, they could be out driving again.

Unfortunately, that is the way the due process laws work. But anyway, we are the ones that are going to get to it.

And that's something I think that we can look at from our end is, you know, how do you immediately get somebody off the road, and we can exchange their license for a bus pass, on us?

I'd be more than willing to do that. And then, they can start writing public transportation until their case is adjudicated.

If we're going to have these big, long delays in times between when they've been caught drunk driving and when they actually get to face the consequences for it, because it makes no sense for them to drive for a year and then have their license suspended, you know, for three months. That makes no sense to me at all.

Their license should be suspended the day they get caught driving drunk.

So, if I can.

Driving under the influence. I'm sorry.

Those are great questions. And by the way, Senator Archuleta, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for your loss and how sorry I am for everyone's loss. It is a tragedy all the way around when that happens.

So, with respect to your question, Senator, it varies so much, and I will say my understanding is that law enforcement generally takes somebody's driver's license when they are arrested. And so, technically, without a driver's license, a person should not be driving.

Now, what we do is we may not see the case for some time because somebody may bond out. If they bond out of jail or they're released from jail without a bond, there are no conditions. When they come into court for the first time, we can address if pending the outcome of their case, they may have conditions of being released on their own recognizance or on bail.

And in those cases, quite often, we can take action of saying, you may not drive without a valid license and insurance. You're not to drive with any measurable amount of alcohol.

Sometimes we will order somebody to have an IID placed upon their person, around their vehicle, or a scram device if it's a more significant case. So, there are things that we can do to try to protect the public pending the outcome of the case. But it is going to vary because it is very case dependent, fact dependent.

And when we actually see that case, as I said, for some misdemeanors, we may not see it four months later before they come into court for the first time. If it's a felony, they're more likely going to be seen sooner rather than later. They may be still in custody at the time of arraignment.

So, it can really vary, but the courts can take action in the right cases.

I think that's an area that I think the Legislature can look at, as improving that part of the system, so that we're immediately removing the threat. And that's part of the consequences, frankly, of being, you know, taking the irresponsible path. And for public safety reasons, we should be doing that.

I just want to say that I have to go for a meeting at 3:30. I understand that people will be speaking and we have our monitors on in our offices. And so, I will be doing dual meeting and listening to that at the same time.

And I'll try to get back here if my meeting ends quickly enough to be able to get back here to listen to everybody's comments. But we will be monitoring it. I do have staff that is also watching that. Your comments are very important to us.

So, thank you all for being here today and hopefully I'll be able to be back before the end. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. We'll go to Senator Menjivar.

Thank you so much. I have a long list of questions here. I apologize, Director, if you can start. You shared three different mandates. Two of them, I'm particularly interested in your. The mandate action and administrative action. What are they?

So the mandatory actions are the ones that are actually in statute, where there's no discretion. We get a citation, we take the prescribed action. In statute, it could be a revocation, it could be a suspension. It could be NOTS points, negligent operator points. There's a range of items that are underneath there.

Those are the ones that are mandatory, that are not discretion, not decided necessarily by the court. The court can convict somebody, but they're not giving us a particular action to take. But because of the statute, we will have to take the action prescribed in the statute. So that's a mandatory action, the administrative action. You are-

I guess I was asking if you give me some examples of them.

Sorry, I don't have the vehicle- Well, I do have the vehicle codes. There could be many of them. You could just summarize. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's just take a simple case. Someone who's. Well, we.

For example, we have this program called Fast Forwarded Action for Speeding Tickets. Right. And this is something we have a partnership between ourselves and the CHP.

Someone gets cited for speeding above 100 miles an hour, there will be a particular prescribed action for that, and that will then get a point on their record and also will then schedule them for a driver safety hearing. That's one example. There are many. There's a list of items.

How do we track? Is it true that, does DMV track how often, say, that person gets reckless? Right. It's over 100. They're driving recklessly, perhaps speeding. Maybe they get that point on their record. The DMV oftentimes sends warning letters if they have a history of getting, of speeding often.

Do we track how often someone gets a warning letter?

Well, maybe. I think if I understand your question. So when we get a citation, we absolutely do track that. Or when there's. But if you think about a citation, citation's only effective from our point of view upon a conviction, because it could be disputed in court, citation may not be upheld. Right.

This one, this fast program I'm talking about is we actually get a referral from law enforcement to have an examination and a hearing. So it's a different process because as I think as the judge. I'll let the judge explain. You know, that process, a citation by itself doesn't you know, doesn't mean that someone is convicted.

It just means that, you know, the officer has cited somebody for a particular event. You mentioned though, if I may, you mentioned on the administrative side there are cases. The FAST program is a good example of that. But so is an admin per se case where you're cited, the officer fills out so called DS367 Driver Form 367.

The license is confiscated, as the judge mentioned, but there's also a form that is taken off. The driver is given a temporary license as a result of that. That is then put into our administrative process.

The officer submits that at the end of their shift, we get that electronically and then as I mentioned a moment ago, we will contact the driver to find out if in fact they want to challenge and have a hearing for the administrative per se process.

And if they say no, we will automatically go through the suspension process and then they will serve the suspension depending on the severity of their offense and past history as well. So I think that's the difference. The mandatory actions are things that are prescribed by statute.

The administrative ones are in statute as well, but they're not from the court process.

Okay, I'd like to come back to the question I embedded in there and, and while we are talking about DUI, but I think this falls under the part of the traffic safety laws. If an individual has had a history of reckless driving, there's been endless amount of citations, maybe, maybe not.

Maybe there are charges, they've committed to charges and maybe I need some explanation on that part. How do we track someone's history to get to a point in flag, this is an individual that is a dangerous individual that should not be on the street.

And then to the warning letter, the DMV sends out warning letters to drivers saying hey, you are close to getting your driver's license revoked or suspended because of your history. How do we track those letters and what happens after those letters are sent?

Right, so the process I think you're talking about is a negligent operator program, so called NOTS points that add up on somebody's license again post conviction. But those convictions come to us, we apply them to the record.

And when people get above a certain threshold, we'll send them a letter to say your license may be suspended based on this activity. If they get another conviction, we'll send them another letter or we'll suspend their license. And at some points, depending on the severity of of the interaction, you could have your license revoked as well.

So that's what the letters are coming from. But the source is that these convictions are maintained on the driver record in our system. So we're not just pulling them out of thin air, but we're downstream from the courts. We receive the conviction, we apply that to the driver's record.

When they reach a certain threshold, we notify the driver that they're pending a suspension or pending a revocation or whatever other action they may need to take.

Is it true that the DMV does not track when they send out warning letters to drivers?

Well, we know the source of the warning letter, so I'm not sure I would agree with that. We may not track. We may not keep a copy of the letter. But the fact we know the threshold has been reached and we know when that threshold is reached, a letter would go out.

Sure. And then a year later, say you sent another letter. Would you know that a letter has previously been sent in the last year or two years?

I think the same threshold would apply. We would be able to see the driver's history. We would see they reached that threshold.

But not that you sent another letter, that you sent a previous letter?

The fact that the threshold would reach would imply that a letter was sent. Are you implying that a letter wasn't sent? I'm not sure.

I'm just trying to track. So from what Senator Blakespear mentioned, some of the articles that came out of this, and some of the findings show that DMV does not track how often or when they send out letters.

If you were to ask them, did this driver get a letter sent a year before or in the past, that is a little worrisome given the fact that we need that kind of data to show that we need to intervene on a driver. So how do we track the actions we've taken on a driver?

Sure. So I think reading, you know, being inside this machine, you know, the story is nuanced. And I think they're differentiating between our driver system that tracks driver records, convictions that come from the courts, and this other process we have, which is a driver safety program. And the driver safety program actually gets referrals from the driver system.

So you may end up with two different sets of letters from two different organizations, two different of my organizations.

So I think what the article is talking about is it's possible that if we have a mandatory action in the driver system, a NOTS point, for example, so you're a negligent operator, there may be discretionary review that may have to go on, and that in the past there has been a paper process between this first system, the driver system, and it gets routed over to the driver safety system.

So there is a possibility that something doesn't flow from system A to system B. And I think in one of the cases most recently mentioned, that's exactly what happened. The paper process connected from system A didn't go to system B, but the record reflects the conviction.

Is there an administrative fix that DMV can do to address that?

Yes, there are two or three. One is just, you know, kind of basic reconciliation. I mean, to minimize it, because there's, as I mentioned, there's millions of these citations that come and come in today. But what the team is doing now, based on, I mean, in the article, it was well written.

I know that the thing is extremely nuanced and you have to kind of read between the lines. You almost have to be inside the machine and understand, well, what are they actually saying here?

But to answer your question, we absolutely are now going back to 2021, and we're pulling all of the records from, if you will, system A, where the driver records data is stored, and making sure that all the records that should have been sent to system B, driver safety, you know, those actions were taken.

And we want to make sure we did not miss any. Because in this case, where that connection did not occur, it should have occurred. But the letters in the original system were sent because they reached a certain point threshold, but it didn't make it over to the driver safety system. Again, it's very inside baseball.

But we are reconciling. We're going back and running five-

I think though, sir you keep saying it's very nuanced. I think we have to be right? It can't be inside baseball, these are people's lives.

Absolutely we take this extremely seriously. The reason we're doing this reconciliation, we're pulling this data is because we absolutely take this thing seriously. My point is that the article is nuanced. I'm not saying that we can't handle nuance. We absolutely can handle nuance. We absolutely need to reconcile those numbers.

On the hearing, is it true that DMV only keeps the records for the hearings up to 12 months?

Not that I'm aware of, no. I believe much longer than that. I've been down at our various offices and they store papers for years.

Okay, so we're 0 for 2 on the two things that I've read in this article so far.

It's possible that the press did not pick up the story correctly. It's possible.

Okay.

But I'd be happy again if you. If you want.

How do we- So we keep the records for the hearings for longer than 12 months. So if we need to go back to see information on a hearing, a specific driver, we're able to do that

if the hearing was requested. In this particular case, the story that published yesterday, the straight up answer is that the- Again, the system A to system B, that connection did not occur. So the reason the press was saying, well, we couldn't request this particular article because it never made it there.

So that did not exist in that second system in the driver safety system. Driver safety system. So that's why they're not saying. We're not saying we did. We deleted the record. It was archived or whatever. It never made it. Since it never made it, we can't produce it because it never reached that point.

Okay, it sounds like maybe this is a case, a specific case that is not common. Just so happens this is one case that slipped through the cracks and had a really unfortunate outcome.

It is a case that slipped through the cracks. And the reason we're going back and pulling all that data for the past five years, we want to find out did anything else slip through the cracks.

So it shows that in our statute, we give you authority to investigate cases. My favorite word in legislation is "may" because it's a very non definitive direction that gives leeway to departments to choose not, most often not not to do the action. So you may investigate cases of collisions involving injury or death.

Is it true that in the past three years only 3,300 cases have been investigated of 56,000 collisions that have resulted in death, bodily injury?

I do not know the answer to that question.

Do you have a number of how often you investigate cases that result in this kind of outcome?

We look at a series of thresholds to find out if the driver has a past history and so on. I can follow up in detail with your office. I'm sorry, I do not have that number with me. But we absolutely do follow up. But the threshold, certain conditions have to be met. We follow up-

This threshold, it's death or bodily injury? That's the threshold.

It could be number of events, could be number of citations. It could be types of citations, it could be court convictions. I mean, it's. It could be a myriad of things.

Do you have the capacity to investigate?

Yes.

All the cases that come before you, that qualify?

Yes.

Okay, so is it that you need a "shall" instead of a "may" in statute?

It's not a question of a shall or a may. It's I don't have the answer to your question, your specific question. I apologize that I am unprepared for that question. But I believe we have the capacity we need to investigate every case that comes to us.

Okay. One more question for you, sir, Director. Going back to what Senator Blakespear shared on, and you spoke about this when you came on, the priority was the real id and a lot of focus was on that. Then you shared that your driver safety team has perhaps focused more on this in the past three years.

But in the past three years, California has surged past most states in terms of deaths resulting from collisions. I'm wondering how we get to. To your words, debate on the right order of what we prioritize and how we can elevate this to the number one priority, given that people are dying from this.

Yeah. So thank you for paying attention. And yes, no, this is a top priority. The reason that we've started working on this thing, we started working on this three years because it was important.

The team has done, I think, a fantastic job of making sure that the records, you know, do we do what we're supposed to do with these particular records, they're adjudicated quickly.

And the fact that we can actually, you know, tell you with great certainty that, you know, you come into the program, you are in and out of the program in a measurable set of days where in the past, you know, it was not anywhere near as deterministic.

So I feel very confident that the team has done a fantastic job of making sure that these cases are handled properly, they're handled quickly and swiftly because that's the way they should be handled. In the past, we were 27 different offices, managed 27 different ways, independently owned and operated. And now we're centrally owned and operated.

We're centrally managed, centrally measured, because we take this as seriously as you take this, as the public should take it.

Okay, and my question to the judge would be, you shared that after someone gets a DUI, gets her license back. I forgot what you mentioned about the DUI. Do you have the process for reckless driving?

It's the same process if there's any traffic related incident, particularly with the vehicle code sections. We have flags in our system so that if the court makes an order, then it gets transmitted to the DMV.

And there are some permissive, like you said, the "mays" where a judge has discretionary as to what to do and there are some mandatory where we're obligated to do things.

So this, I don't know if judge, if you've read this article, the Individual killed a toddler after having over 15 traffic violations. And then later, the DMV, after they were charged, the DMV renewed their license. What is the disconnect?

Is it because you said it takes maybe like a couple of days to send that over to the DMV?

So there's a mandatory, I think it's 1803, I believe is the vehicle code section for when there is a conviction, if there's a judgment at that time. And so most traffic offenses, many misdemeanors, within five days, we report that conviction to the DMV.

For cases that get sentenced later than at the time of the sentencing, within five days, that information is supposed to be transmitted over.

So even if they got convicted until they get sentenced, then that gets transferred over?

That's when most often it gets transmitted. Because we can't order anything until the sentencing. We could have conditions of release, but those conditions would not be delivered to the DMV. It's only the orders that we-

And that's why they renewed the license, because perhaps the sentencing hadn't happened yet. Okay, thank you,

Chair Arreguin.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Following up on Senator Menjivar's questions. And thank you. You asked me the questions I was going to ask. And thank you, Mr. Gordon and Judge, for being here today. You know, one of the challenges is that we. We need to ensure that there's due process in, in our civil and legal system.

And so. But if somebody enters a guilty plea or there's some imposition of probation, then there could be a situation where their license is suspended as a condition of that. In the case of felony DUI, then automatically upon conviction, their license, they're not able to drive.

But I think the intersectionality between the administrative process and the court process is really important. What we're talking about, you know, over the next few weeks will be changes to the traffic code and the penal code and sort of the criminal legal penalties associated with this.

But I think there are existing tools that the Administration has and the courts have to enforce our laws to hold people accountable and to make sure our roads are safe, because I think at the end of the day, that is our goal.

And so I just want to emphasize the points that Senator Menjivar made that making sure that we can check earlier in the process when people have.

It may not be a DUI offense, but it may be another reckless driving offense or some other traffic violation that indicates sort of risky or dangerous driving that that is brought to the attention of DMV sooner so that we can. So that we can take action to make sure it doesn't escalate.

In the case of the case that was in Calmatters yesterday, you know, a toddler lost their life because we didn't flag this earlier in the process and this person was allowed to drive. And so we're really talking about people's lives. That's what we're trying to protect here.

Really making sure that we use our investigatory power to make sure that we are looking into these incidents and can take action to suspend licenses if an individual has repeat behavior or is posing a risk to traffic safety, I think is extremely important as well.

So I think this, how we use our existing legal tools, I think is extremely important. We'll do what we can to look at how we can strengthen those tools. But I think it's really critical that you use the power that you have.

And if we need to make it "shall" rather than "may", if we need to be clear and more prescriptive, that's something that we can talk about. But I think that will make a big impact.

Lastly, just want to just say that while we're focusing on the criminal legal piece and the administrative enforcement piece, the design and enforcement that we talked about in the previous panel is also important as well.

So I don't have a question because Senator Menjivar asked my questions, but I just wanted to lean in and sort of emphasize some of the issues that she'd raised. And I know that you're working on making sure that information is transmitted more efficiently, you're improving systems.

But the more that we can use the tools that we have to flag reckless driving and people that pose go risk to traffic safety earlier in the process will make a big impact in saving lives as well. Thank you.

Just a couple clarifying questions. The administrative suspension by DMV is not conditional upon a criminal conviction, correct?

Yes. Yes, you're correct.

Okay. And in, you know, in the documents that we have here, it's just broadly stated it occurs shortly after arrest. But I think you, you indicated the timeline is immediate. Is that correct?

It's typically within 30 days is the way the statute reads. They have 10 days to request a hearing. In 30 days, the suspension takes effect.

Right. And it's your understanding of the statutes that regulate your revocation suspension process that they require due process?

Yes.

And why is that? What's your understanding of that? Is it because the driver's license is the property right of the individual or the entitlement of the individual?

That's a great question. I don't have an answer for you about the due process. I'm assuming it's in the statute, but I am not a trained legal professional. But I'd be happy to follow up with your office.

Right. Well, you refer to it as a privilege. Is that your understanding as a Director?

Oh, yes.

Of the entire Dmv, that a driver's license is a privilege?

Yes, sir.

And what I'm asking is that your understanding that a privilege is not subject to due process under the Constitution of the State of California, the United States, or your office. Or your office?

I cannot answer that question, but I'd be happy to get an answer.

Please do. It'd be helpful to have your legal counsel give us the answer to that question. And the reason I'm asking is because it seems like we're waiting 10 days for what people in this room, including on the dais, are calling a due process. Right.

On the administrative side, for a driver's license, that is, as I understand it in statute, identify not as a property right or a protected right under the Constitution, but a privilege.

And it strikes me that in terms of future legislation, we may want to clear that up so that the Administration- administrative suspension by DMV can take place instantly by operation of law, by statute, that the minute somebody is stopped and arrested for DMV on the traffic stop, that the administrative-

That the administrative suspension occurs de facto at that point.

I understand.

All right. Is there any reason that you know of including IT issues or some of the issues that Senator Blakespear was asserting that would prevent DMV from cooperating on an instantaneous administrative suspension? Pre hearing?

I know of no reason that it couldn't be faster.

I mean, on the roadside, they are confiscating the license, I think the judge mentioned.

But also providing a temporary license.

which is part of the form, which goes back to the due process.

But if you, if the, if let's say the entry, let's say it's an interpretation, then my guess would be that it should be very, very easy to maybe change that period. I just don't know, you know, the interpretation on the 30 days, whether or not that is grounded in a court case or some other fact.

And I have to going back to the first question I asked you, can your Department can administratively suspend or revoke a license irrespective of what's happening in the criminal court, correct?