---
title: "California Truckers Charged in Deaths Keep Their Licenses While the D.M.V. Waits"
description: "State law lets the agency suspend a big-rig driver before any conviction, while the federal crackdown on California licenses targets who gets one in the first place."
author: "rews special report"
published: 2026-10-19T15:00:00Z
modified: 2026-10-20T05:46:37Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/california-s-dmv-could-suspend-truckers-after-fatal-crashes--6ca1cd
language: en
type: special report
tags: ["trucks", "safety", "dmv", "regulation", "infrastructure", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# California Truckers Charged in Deaths Keep Their Licenses While the D.M.V. Waits

*State law lets the agency suspend a big-rig driver before any conviction, while the federal crackdown on California licenses targets who gets one in the first place.*

Special report · By rews special report · October 19, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/california-s-dmv-could-suspend-truckers-after-fatal-crashes--6ca1cd

## In brief

- Nearly half of 130-plus California commercial drivers charged with vehicular manslaughter since 2019 held valid licenses in late May
- The DMV can suspend after a fatal crash without a conviction but opened about 3,300 cases against 55,500 serious crashes in 2022-24
- Federal rules disqualify truckers after a manslaughter conviction but allow imminent hazard orders before trial
- New York holds a DMV hearing after fatal crashes, while Florida screens every fatal crash report
- The federal crackdown on California licenses targets immigration and English rules and withholds $158.3 million

Nearly half of the more than 130 California commercial drivers charged with vehicular manslaughter from 2019 to early 2024 still held a valid Class A or Class B license in late May, according to [an investigation by CalMatters](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/10/california-trucker-license-fatal-crashes/) published Monday.

A dozen of those drivers were ticketed for unsafe driving in a commercial vehicle after the fatal crash. The reporters, Lauren Hepler and Robert Lewis, built the count from court filings and Department of Motor Vehicles records, and their central finding concerns a power the D.M.V. already has. State law lets it investigate a driver after a deadly collision and suspend the license with or without a conviction. Mostly, it waits for the courts.

Federal trucking rules also turn on convictions, but they let Washington pull a driver off the road within days when the evidence is strong. California’s D.M.V. opened about 3,300 negligent-operator cases tied to fatal or serious-injury crashes from 2022 through 2024, against nearly 55,500 such collisions, or roughly 6 percent. And the federal government’s long campaign against California’s commercial licenses, which has cost the state $158.3 million in highway money, is about who should get a license at all, not what happens after a licensed driver kills someone.

![A red semi-truck with a cream trailer waits beside an hourglass supporting a raised barrier on a yellow background.](https://rews.cc/img/4c6cb82f4c7022f6dbbd61cd0f9fa3ab6c0877d9.webp)

## Two crashes, 11 months apart

In July 2021, Baljit Singh’s semitruck drifted over the median on Merle Haggard Drive in Kern County as he drove to an Amazon distribution center, and it killed a 26-year-old man on a motorcycle. Police found pages of his log book, the record of his hours at the wheel, “ripped into small pieces” in an overhead compartment, according to the collision report. California Highway Patrol investigators alleged that he was fatigued after driving past the 12-hour limit and recommended a vehicular manslaughter charge.

The D.M.V. knew about the crash and had the authority to suspend him. It didn’t.

In June 2022, traffic slowed outside Fresno and Mr. Singh’s red Freightliner, carrying fertilizer from Missouri at 65 miles per hour, did not. A fully loaded rig at that speed needs nearly two football fields to stop. It struck the back of an S.U.V. carrying Loren Chow, his wife, Jenny, and their 17-year-old son home from a college visit, and flipped it. Jenny Chow died. Law enforcement said Mr. Singh caused the crash by driving too fast.

Mr. Chow is suing Mr. Singh, the trucking companies and the vehicle manufacturers, and he can’t discuss the collision itself. He told CalMatters the death was “completely avoidable.”

> She would have seen so much if only the DMV had done what any person in his right mind would have done, which is to suspend the license.
>
> — Loren Chow, whose wife was killed in the 2022 crash, [calmatters.org](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/10/california-trucker-license-fatal-crashes/)

Mr. Singh pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter in Kern County and to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in Fresno, [CalMatters reported in April 2025](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/04/license-to-kill/). The D.M.V. pulled his driving privileges in February 2024, two years and seven months after the first death and 20 months after the second, as [KGET, the NBC station in Bakersfield, laid out](https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/license-to-kill-a-17-news-special-report/). Mr. Singh and his lawyer did not respond to CalMatters’ requests for comment.

Mr. Chow has written about the case [on a blog in his wife’s name](https://www.jennygchow.com/post/license-to-kill). He wrote that the Fresno judge, with the Kern case still unresolved, granted leniency believing the driver had a clean record, and that the sentence was 50 days in an adult work program and $30 a month in restitution. He wrote that the driver never reported to the program and now faces an arrest warrant. Those accounts could not be independently verified.

There was one matter on which the D.M.V. did not wait. In 2023, months before it suspended Mr. Singh, it began sending Mr. Chow letters threatening to garnish his wages, seize his property and put a lien on his home over a late registration fee on the S.U.V. the truck had totaled.

![A red car with a severely crumpled front and damaged roof stands against a yellow background, with a large envelope icon overlapping its rear wheel.](https://rews.cc/img/0a180dfffbcd2f2647408e14188aaffd6dcfb8a8.webp)

## What the law allows

The power at issue sits in [Section 13800 of the Vehicle Code](https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-13800/), which says the D.M.V. “may conduct an investigation” into whether a license should be suspended or revoked once it receives information that the driver was in a crash causing death or injury. The next section lets the agency order a re-examination, suspend a driver who refuses and give “due consideration” to how many miles a driver covers. A state appeals court, in [Johnson v. Department of Motor Vehicles](https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/222/695.html) in 1990, called this “discretionary administrative review,” separate from the suspensions that follow automatically from certain convictions.

The automatic track waits for a verdict. A truck driver convicted of manslaughter is disqualified from commercial driving for 12 months, and a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction generally brings a three-year revocation. A misdemeanor conviction usually carries no required license penalty at all, which leaves the decision with the D.M.V., according to the 2025 investigation. Felony charges typically involve conduct like drunken driving or extreme speeding.

Points are meant to be a second check. Vehicular manslaughter counts two points on an ordinary record, and [Section 12810.5](https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/division-6/chapter-1/article-3/section-12810-5/) values each point at one and a half times when the violation is tied to a vehicle requiring a Class A or Class B license. For a trucker, that makes three. In almost every D.M.V. record the reporters reviewed, it was listed as two. The agency said in a written statement that it relies on the courts to tell it when a conviction involves a commercial vehicle.

![A large eraser rubs out one of three red circles on a cream card bearing a truck silhouette against a blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/4465aab946f984261f12e0d17efd1e5d5adaca7b.webp)

California already acts before conviction in one large category of cases. Under its [administrative per se law](https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/dmv-hearing/admin-per-se/), the D.M.V. moves to suspend the license of a driver arrested at 0.04 percent blood alcohol or higher in a commercial vehicle, half the limit for other drivers. The driver can ask for a hearing, and the suspension does not depend on how the criminal case ends.

## The federal rules

Federal law sets the floor for every state’s commercial licenses. Under [49 C.F.R. 383.51](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/383.51), “causing a fatality through the negligent operation of a CMV,” a category that expressly includes motor vehicle manslaughter, brings a one-year disqualification on a first conviction, three years if the truck was hauling hazardous materials and a lifetime ban on a second. Each of those penalties is triggered by a conviction.

One federal tool doesn’t wait. Congress gave the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration emergency authority in the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, and the agency wrote it into [Section 383.52](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/383.52) in 2002. The rule says the agency “must disqualify” any driver whose driving it determines to be an imminent hazard. It can do so for up to 30 days before a hearing, and for up to a year after notice and a hearing.

The agency has used it after fatal crashes. On July 9, 2020, Corey Robert Withrow, an Ohio-licensed trucker, drove into a line of slowed traffic in an Indiana work zone on Interstate 70 and killed four siblings. Eight days later, with no trial held, the agency [ordered him not to operate any commercial vehicle](https://www.busandmotorcoachnews.com/fmcsa-declares-driver-in-fatal-crash-an-imminent-hazard-to-public-safety/), calling his violations “blatant and egregious.” He had told the police his phone distracted him, and he later tested positive for several drugs, including amphetamines.

![A large hand holds a miniature yellow truck with a cream trailer above a black road against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/4847f4cdf394e502e1e9ff106b3e18cfeacf9106.webp)

Federal rules also put a clock on the paperwork California’s system depends on. A state must make an in-state conviction of a commercial driver available on the driver’s record [within 10 days](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/384.225), and must report convictions of out-of-state drivers to their home states [within the same window](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/384.209). In California, many convictions never arrived. [CalMatters found in June 2025](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/06/california-courts-dmv/) about 400 vehicular manslaughter cases from 2019 to 2024 with convictions missing from drivers’ records, most because courts never sent them. After reporters asked, 32 county courts sent more than 275, and nearly 200 drivers were then suspended or revoked. That review covered all drivers, not only truckers.

## Why the D.M.V. waited

The trucker findings are the seventh part of a series that began with a wider count. In April 2025, CalMatters reported on D.M.V. records for more than 2,600 people charged with vehicular manslaughter from 2019 to early 2024. Nearly 40 percent held a valid license, and nearly 150 had been issued one less than a year after an alleged fatal crash. Chris Orrock, a D.M.V. spokesman, said at the time, “We use our authority as mandated and as necessary.” For commercial drivers the share still licensed was higher: nearly half.

On Reddit’s r/California\_Politics, where the trucker story drew its own thread, one reader argued that the problem reaches well beyond professional drivers.

> ...we as a state are INSANELY lenient on reckless & dangerous drivers in general. Lots of these people should be in prison for decades/life, but instead they are just sent right back on our roads to do it all again.
>
> — u/Maximillien on [r/California\_Politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1xa0alo/they_killed_people_with_their_big_rigs_and/phq6nje/)

The state’s own numbers back the leniency half of that claim, whatever one makes of the remedy. In [a March analysis](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/03/california-dmv-investigations/), CalMatters set D.M.V. case counts beside crash totals from the University of California, Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center: about 3,300 negligent-operator cases from 2022 through 2024 against nearly 55,500 fatal or serious-injury collisions. The agency said it investigates every driver who contributes to such a crash. Officials offered partial explanations, such as drunken drivers who die alone and hit-and-run drivers never found, that don’t account for the gap.

Lawmakers pressed the point at a joint hearing of the Senate Public Safety and Transportation Committees on March 10. State Senator Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from Van Nuys, asked whether changing “may” to “shall” in the statute would help. Steve Gordon, the D.M.V. director, [said the wording was not the issue](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/03/california-dmv-hearing/).

> I believe we have the capacity we need to investigate every case that comes to us.
>
> — Steve Gordon, director of the California D.M.V., at a Senate hearing, [calmatters.org](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/03/california-dmv-hearing/)

He also acknowledged that the unit dealing with dangerous drivers “wasn’t the first team we attacked, because we were worried about lines and Real ID.” He told the panel he did not know whether the agency could speed up suspensions.

Seven months later, Jonathan Groveman, a D.M.V. spokesman, wrote in an email to CalMatters that the agency had recently changed how it handles fatal crashes and manslaughter convictions, and that it needs timely reports from the police and the courts in order to act. He wrote:

> During this modernization process, the DMV identified some cases that had not been previously reviewed and have now been processed or are currently being processed.
>
> — Jonathan Groveman, D.M.V. spokesman, in an email, [calmatters.org](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/10/california-trucker-license-fatal-crashes/)

Shortly after CalMatters sent its list of drivers, the agency acted against a dozen of them, suspending licenses or removing commercial privileges. Earlier in the year, a spokesperson had told KGET that the department “carefully reviews each traffic incident and takes action under California law as appropriate.” The two statements are hard to square with each other.

In the summer of 2018, Jon Israel, a former trucker working as a tow operator in the Inland Empire, pulled his overheating tow truck onto the shoulder of Interstate 10. A police report shows that Marco Rodriguez’s tractor-trailer drifted onto the shoulder and its side mirror struck Mr. Israel, who died. Mr. Rodriguez was convicted of manslaughter. From 2022 through last year he was caught speeding in commercial vehicles three times and ticketed once for a lane violation, and in March the D.M.V. renewed his commercial license. It disqualified him in July, after CalMatters asked.

Mukund Arun, Mr. Rodriguez’s defense lawyer, called the crash “a very unfortunate, tragic incident” and pointed out that his client was charged only with a misdemeanor. Maxine Israel, Mr. Israel’s widow, comes from a trucking family. She once skipped her high school graduation to ride along on her father’s run.

> What the hell? ... Are they waiting for him to kill somebody else?
>
> — Maxine Israel, widow of Jon Israel, [calmatters.org](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/10/california-trucker-license-fatal-crashes/)

## How other states handle it

New York reviews every death. Under Section 510(3) of its Vehicle and Traffic Law, the state motor vehicle department’s [Safety and Business Hearing Bureau](https://dmv.ny.gov/tickets/safety-and-business-hearings) holds fatal accident hearings to decide whether a driver’s license should be suspended or revoked, and an administrative law judge weighs evidence that includes police reports and witness testimony. The proceeding runs apart from any criminal case. [A New York defense lawyer wrote](https://www.stiteslegal.com/blog/2021/march/the-new-york-fatal-accident-hearing/) that any crash resulting in death leads to such an inquiry, and that outcomes range from no action to a suspension of up to 365 days or revocation.

Florida sits closer to California. [Its statutes](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/Chapter322/All) direct the state’s motor vehicle department to screen the report of every crash involving a death or an injury requiring hospital transport, but the mandatory penalty that follows, a driver improvement course, applies only after a conviction or a no contest plea. A separate provision lets the department order a reexamination of any driver who caused or contributed to a fatal crash, much as California’s does.

Set beside those states, California does not lack authority. The difference is the default. New York opens a review whenever someone dies, while California’s statute says only that the D.M.V. may.

![A dark blue magnifying glass with a closed eye symbol rests over a stack of yellow file folders on a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/3e77205ce9d07f382212ce7e59487f612dbb7da3.webp)

## The federal crackdown

The federal fight over California’s truckers began in Florida. On Aug. 12, 2025, a tractor-trailer driven by Harjinder Singh made a turn across the Florida Turnpike near Fort Pierce through an “Official Use Only” opening, and a minivan struck the trailer, killing all three people inside, [WPEC-TV reported](https://cbs12.com/news/local/deadly-turnpike-crash-sparks-blame-game-did-california-follow-the-law-or-fail). The driver held a California commercial license and had earlier held one from Washington. After the crash he failed an English proficiency assessment, answering two of 12 questions correctly, according to the Transportation Department.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy withheld [more than $40 million](https://cbs12.com/news/local/40m-withheld-from-ca-after-undocumented-driver-causes-fatal-crash-on-fl-turnpike-3-dead-st-lucie-county-fort-pierce-us-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-ron-destantis-jay-collins-october-16-2025) in motor carrier safety grants in October 2025 over English-language enforcement. A federal audit found that more than 25 percent of California’s non-domiciled commercial licenses, those issued to people who are not permanent residents, had been issued unlawfully, some running years past the holder’s legal presence documents. In January the agency issued a final determination withholding $158.3 million, 4 percent of two federal highway programs, starting in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, [Trucking Dive reported](https://www.truckingdive.com/news/fmcsa-final-determination-california-non-domiciled-funding-158-million-dollars/809175/). A national rule limiting non-domiciled licenses to holders of H-2A, H-2B and E-2 visas [took effect March 16](https://scopelitis.com/the-transportation-brief/non-domiciled-final-rule-d-c-circuit-keeps-fmcsas-final-rule-in-place-while-the-case-proceeds/). Mr. Duffy announced the funding cut on X and framed it as a fight with the governor.

> 🚨It’s RECKONING DAY for Gavin Newsom 🚨
>
> Our demands to California were simple:
>
> ➡️ Follow the rules
> ➡️ Revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers
> ➡️ Fix the system so this never happens again
>
> Gavin refused. So now I am pulling nearly $160 MILLION from…
>
> — **Secretary Sean Duffy** @SecDuffy on X · [January 7, 2026](https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/2009032144786739645)

California canceled about 17,000 licenses, and [CalMatters reported in April](https://calmatters.org/economy/2026/04/truck-drivers-california-2/) that as many as 61,000 truckers, 5 to 10 percent of the state’s commercial license holders, could lose theirs in the coming years. On Aug. 31, Mr. Duffy closed 110 driving schools that he said were linked to 5,000 drivers who later failed roadside English checks, and [said](https://www.ttnews.com/articles/duffy-closes-110-cdl-schools) that 239 road deaths were “correlated with someone who is not proficient in the English language.”

[![CA loses $160M in federal funds over delayed CDL cancellations](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b1APmGzS7wY/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1APmGzS7wY)

A news report posted on YouTube on the federal decision to withhold $160 million from California over its delayed cancellation of commercial licenses. Video: ABC30 Action News · YouTube

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office has answered with a safety statistic, posted on X more than once: California commercial license holders, it said, have a fatal crash rate nearly 40 percent below the national average.

> Sounds like the federal Secretary of Transportation needs a lesson on his own road rules.
>
> The facts are plain and simple — California commercial driver’s license holders had a fatal crash rate nearly 40% LOWER than the national average.
>
> Texas — the only state with more…
>
> — **Governor Newsom Press Office** @GovPressOffice on X · [October 16, 2025](https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1978642641656177126)

The figure is the state’s own calculation from 2023 federal data, which it put at 39.4 percent in its formal reply to federal regulators. Federal mileage-based numbers show a smaller gap. The Western States Trucking Association [wrote](https://westrk.org/2026-01-governor-newsom-press-office-the-facts-are-plain-and-simple-california-commercial-drivers-license-holders-had-a-fatal-crash-rate-nearly-40-lower-than-the-national-average/) that the latest federal state table showed a fatality rate of 0.14 in California against 0.19 nationally, about 25 percent lower. A [June letter to Mr. Duffy](https://www.schiff.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DOT-CDL-Restrictions-CA-Transportation-Funds.pdf) from Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, and colleagues cited 0.12 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles in 2023 against 0.17 nationally, which works out to about 29 percent lower. Both support the direction of the governor’s claim, and neither supports its size. California still had 392 deaths in large-truck crashes in 2023, second only to Texas’s 730, according to [federal crash data](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813717.pdf).

Neither side’s numbers speaks to the drivers CalMatters examined, and its court and D.M.V. records do not include immigration status. The newest case to draw federal attention fits the licensing debate instead. On Sept. 2, a truck driven by Manjit Singh of Fresno struck a car head-on in Brown County, Ohio, killing Brenda Watson, 50, and he was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, [Hoodline reported](https://hoodline.com/2026/09/ohio-gop-presses-newsom-after-california-licensed-trucker-kills-brown-county-woman/). The Department of Homeland Security says he entered the country illegally in 2023 and later got work authorization. California issued his commercial license in 2025. The D.M.V. said it checks legal presence through a federal database and gives its tests entirely in English.

In the r/California thread, a reader raised the language argument directly.

> Doesn’t help when you have drivers that literally can’t read English, but that’s problematic to say for some reason.
>
> — u/Hina\_is\_my\_waifu on [r/California](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/1xa6fdb/they_killed_people_with_their_big_rigs_and/phsfwlz/)

Another reader replied that the most important road signs rely on numbers and symbols. The record leaves the language argument partly standing. Mr. Duffy’s 239 deaths are a figure he himself described as a correlation. And the cases at the center of the CalMatters investigation turn on what the D.M.V. did after a crash. The federal tool built for that moment, the imminent hazard order, applies to any driver whatever his origin.

## The case for waiting

The strongest argument for the D.M.V.’s caution is the presumption of innocence. A charge is not a finding, and many vehicular manslaughter cases are misdemeanors, as Mr. Arun noted of his client’s. A truck driver who loses a commercial license loses a living, and a defense lawyer for another trucker in the 2025 series argued that “truck drivers drive thousands and thousands of miles a year.” The Legislature wrote that concern into the law, which tells the D.M.V. to weigh mileage.

Federal data also show that a crash involving a truck is often not the trucker’s doing. Under the federal [crash preventability program](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/04/13/2023-07818/crash-preventability-determination-program), carriers submitted 39,133 requests for review from May 2020 through December 2022, and more than 95 percent of the eligible crashes were found not preventable. Those were crash types the carriers chose to submit, such as being struck from behind, so the figure describes those categories more than truck crashes as a whole.

Those objections answer a different question from the one CalMatters asked. Its 130-plus drivers were not merely involved in deadly crashes. Prosecutors had charged each of them with manslaughter. A D.M.V. suspension comes with a hearing, as New York’s does, and the federal government grounds drivers before trial when the evidence warrants. When the D.M.V. finally opened the files it was sent, it acted against a dozen drivers shortly afterward, which suggests the obstacle was not legal authority.

Tami Friedrich, president of the Truck Safety Coalition, took up road safety after her sister, brother-in-law and their two children died in a crash with a big rig just after Christmas in 1989. She said professional drivers owe more than other motorists.

> There’s a certain level of responsibility above and beyond a regular car driver that they should adhere to.
>
> — Tami Friedrich, president of the Truck Safety Coalition, [calmatters.org](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/10/california-trucker-license-fatal-crashes/)

Some readers placed the danger upstream of the D.M.V. On r/California\_Politics, one pointed to how drivers are paid.

> so much death can be prevented by paying drivers by the hour instead of by the mile which incentivizes them to drive at unsafe speeds for unsafe stretches of time to cover more distance in less time.
>
> — u/LaBaaDiabolique on [r/California\_Politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1xa0alo/they_killed_people_with_their_big_rigs_and/phprrn6/)

Pay sits outside this record. The Singh case did involve alleged fatigue and an hours violation, and CalMatters cited experts who said fly-by-night operators and training schools have dragged down standards. Joe Rajkovacz, a longtime owner-operator and advocate with the Western States Trucking Association, described the margin in an 80,000-pound truck: “One thing goes wrong, you’re gonna kill somebody.” A change in how drivers are paid would not reach a driver who has already been charged in a death, and that is where the state’s authority lies.

## What comes next

On Sept. 25, Mr. Newsom [signed four bills](https://calmatters.org/investigation/2026/09/california-new-dui-laws-2026/) aimed at drunken drivers, the survivors of a 17-bill package. One, by Assemblyman Tom Lackey, a Republican from Palmdale, raises the points for most intoxicated vehicular manslaughter convictions from two to three; an earlier version covering all vehicular manslaughter convictions was narrowed. None of the four changes the D.M.V.’s discretionary review after a fatal crash or the point count for commercial drivers.

Republican lawmakers led by Mr. Lackey [have asked for an audit of the D.M.V.](https://www.sierradailynews.com/state/republican-lawmakers-demand-audit-after-reporting-failures-put-lives-at-risk) over the unreported convictions. Mr. Newsom leaves office in January, and the Legislature opens its new session Dec. 7.

In Washington, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard California’s challenge to the funding cut on Sept. 11, as [lawyers argued](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/california-fmcsa-argue-non-domiciled-cdl-halt-in-court) over whether the state’s cancellations amounted to compliance. Kristen Kido, a deputy attorney general, told the court the state had shown “substantial compliance with all of the relevant components of federal law.” No ruling had been issued by Tuesday.

For Mr. Rodriguez, the timeline is already set. D.M.V. records show his disqualification lasts one year, and he will be eligible to drive trucks again next summer.

## Join the discussion

- [They killed people with their big rigs, and California let them keep driving](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/1xa6fdb/they_killed_people_with_their_big_rigs_and/) — r/California · 38 comments
- [They killed people with their big rigs, and California let them keep driving](https://www.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1xa0alo/they_killed_people_with_their_big_rigs_and/) — r/California_Politics · 21 comments
- [CA allows truck drivers to stay on the road after fatal crashes](https://www.reddit.com/r/CaliforniaUncensored/comments/1xaepnm/ca_allows_truck_drivers_to_stay_on_the_road_after/) — r/CaliforniaUncensored

## See also

- [FMCSA final determination of substantial noncompliance for California](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2026-01/California%20Final%20Determination%20of%20Substantial%20Noncompliance.pdf) — transportation.gov · The January order behind the $158.3 million withholding
- [They crashed. They killed. They're driving again in the North Bay](https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/license-to-kill-north-bay/) — calmatters.org · How California restores licenses to drivers convicted in fatal crashes
- [A guide to suspension and revocation of driving privileges in New York State](https://dmv.ny.gov/brochure/c-12.pdf) — dmv.ny.gov · New York DMV's own guide, including fatal crash penalties
- [California DMV Employer Testing Program](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/commercial-driver-licenses-cdl/employer-testing-program/) — dmv.ca.gov · How employers may give the commercial drive test in California
- [FMCSA Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts](https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/large-truck-and-bus-crash-facts) — fmcsa.dot.gov · Federal crash data by year and state
- [5,472 people died in large truck crashes in 2023. The data tells us why](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/5472-people-died-in-large-truck-crashes-in-2023-the-data-tells-us-why-and-it-is-not-the-story-being-told-on-social-media) — freightwaves.com · A FreightWaves analysis of what federal data says about crash causes
- [Commercial driver's license program improvements, 2002 federal rule](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2002/07/31/02-18457/commercial-drivers-license-standards-requirements-and-penalties-commercial-drivers-license-program) — federalregister.gov · The rule that created the imminent hazard disqualification
- [CDL court fight centers around expiring work authorization](https://landline.media/cdl-court-fight-centers-around-expiring-work-authorization/) — landline.media · Land Line on the pending appeals court cases