‘We’re talking about people’s lives:’ California lawmakers grill DMV
director on deadly failures
[March 12, 2026]
By LAUREN HEPLER and ROBERT LEWIS/CalMatters
The man in charge of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles finally
had to face tough questions Tuesday about what his agency is doing to
address an increase in road deaths in recent years.
Though he didn’t provide many answers.
DMV Director Steve Gordon told lawmakers that he didn’t know if his
agency had the ability to speed up license suspensions, didn’t know if
he could get data for lawmakers on how often the agency takes action
against dangerous drivers, and wasn’t familiar with numbers – that his
agency provided CalMatters just last week – showing the DMV rarely
investigates motorists who get in crashes seriously injuring or killing
people.
Gordon did, however, assure lawmakers at various times that the seeming
lack of details or direct response to questions was because the DMV’s
operations are “complex,” “very inside baseball,” and “extremely
nuanced.”
“I can follow up in detail with your office,” he told one senator.
Gordon’s grilling came at a state Senate informational hearing jointly
held by the public safety and transportation committees. It appears to
be the first such legislative hearing focused on DUIs, traffic laws and
roadway fatalities in decades.
Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from San Jose, cited CalMatters’ License
to Kill series as the inspiration. The project has found that the state
of California – led by the DMV – routinely allows dangerous drivers with
horrifying histories to continue to get behind the wheel, where they go
on to kill. The series also revealed that California has some of the
nation’s weakest DUI laws and courts across the state failed to report
vehicular homicide convictions to the DMV.
Legislators this session have so far introduced a dozen road safety
bills aimed at addressing the issues and cracking down on dangerous
driving. Tuesday’s hearing was an opportunity to press officials,
researchers and advocates on these and other possible solutions. For
close to four hours lawmakers talked to road safety and legal experts
including a judge, a police chief, a prosecutor, a defense attorney and
an advocate with Mothers Against Drunk Driving whose own son was killed.
But the senators saved their most pointed questions for the director of
the DMV.
During an extended back-and-forth with Gordon, Cortese repeatedly asked
why it was so hard for his staff to get basic data from the DMV as
lawmakers weigh new DUI laws. Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from
Van Nuys, wanted to know how drivers with 15 offenses can keep their
licenses. Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas,
questioned why the agency can move quickly on things like road tolls,
but “puts up a wall” on potential life-saving measures, such as
expanding in-car breathalyzers to block drunk driving.
“The DMV, when they feel it’s important, can act quickly. But then there
are these other things that seem to be really stuck in molasses,”
Blakespear said.
Gordon has avoided talking about the issue in the nearly year since the
series launched, declining repeated interview requests and showing no
signs publicly that it’s a top priority. In his first public comments,
he often dodged questions and said the DMV’s work involves juggling
multiple antiquated technology systems.
Gordon said the agency’s driver safety division was not his first
priority when he was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, but that it
has since emerged as an area of focus.
“I’ll admit that wasn’t the first team we attacked, because we were
worried about lines and Real ID and a bunch of other things that were
occurring,” Gordon said. In the three years since, he said the
department has begun to update its processes but that “there’s still
much more to do.”
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Steve Gordon speaks during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif.,
July 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
Multiple lawmakers pressed Gordon on specific ways the DMV’s systems
fail to hold deadly drivers accountable.
Menjivar, who last month proposed a bill to lengthen suspensions for
reckless driving, zeroed in on drivers who “slipped through the
cracks” while amassing horrifying histories of reckless driving.
Since state law says the DMV “may conduct an investigation” after a
fatal crash, she asked why the department told CalMatters it opened
only around 3,300 “negligent operator cases” from 2022 through 2024,
when state data shows nearly 55,000 fatal or serious injury crashes.
Would it help, she asked, if legislators changed the law to say that
the DMV “shall” investigate major crashes?
“It’s not a question of a ‘shall’ or a ‘may,’” Gordon said, adding
that he could not recall specific investigation numbers on the spot.
“I believe we have the capacity we need to investigate every case
that comes to us.”
Sen. Jesse Arreguín, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Senate
Public Safety Committee, focused on the case of Kostas Linardos, who
drove a three-ton pickup truck at high speed into the back of a
sedan in late 2022 after years of wracking up tickets for speeding
and reckless driving.
“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,” Arreguín said. “We’re talking
about people’s lives. That’s what we’re trying to protect here.”
Gordon told lawmakers that his agency is conducting a review to make
sure the unit responsible for driver safety is getting all of the
information on drivers that it needs to act from other parts of the
agency. However, he offered no details and when approached by a
CalMatters reporter as he left the hearing Gordon would only say,
“we’re not doing press today,” before exiting the building.
In the hearing room, lawmakers continued to listen to horror
stories.
Napa District Attorney Allison Haley recounted a recent case in her
office where a driver had 13 DUIs. In another, she recalled, a
driver killed two people but served virtually the same amount of
time as if he’d killed one. Proposed legislation would address these
issues, adding prison time for repeat DUI offenders and drivers who
kill multiple victims in a crash.
“This isn’t Costco. We don’t want a system where you can kill one
person and kill another person — or more — for free,” Haley said.
“And that’s currently the situation that we have.”
Other witnesses at the hearing pushed back on the need for stronger
criminal sentencing, focusing instead on ways to redesign roads or
encourage more proactive substance abuse treatment. Ramping up jail
time or other punishment, they argued, may have disproportionate
impacts on first-time offenders or poor defendants.
For Tara Repka Flores, none of this is theoretical. She lived
through the horror one day in 2019, when she got a call that Alec —
a magnetic 13-year-old athlete, meal prepper and her beloved son —
was run down on his way to school in Sutter County. He was hit by
another school parent who was driving her own three kids to school
drunk.
She urged the assembled senators to do absolutely everything in
their power to try to save as many families as possible from a
similar fate.
“Ignition interlock? Yes. Stronger sentencing? Yes. Accountability
for hit and run drivers? Yes,” she said. “Yes to all of it. Stop
other people from getting killed.”
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