At the beginning of the year, it looked as if California could be headed toward significantly reforming its approach to dangerous drivers.

By the end of the summer, the reality isn’t so ambitious.

Politicians from both parties launched 17 bills at the start of this legislative session. Introduced as a package, many of the bills together were hailed as the largest driving reforms in a generation. 

They were designed to address a 50% increase in roadway fatalities over the last decade, as 40,000 people lost their lives in car crashes across the state – far more than are killed by guns. As our reporting over the last two years has shown, California allows deadly drivers – people with a long history of dangerous behavior – to keep their licenses, even though state officials have the authority, and indeed sometimes the legal mandate, to do something about it.

But 17 bills dropped to eight earlier in the summer and last week, three more died.

For example: Republican Assemblymember Roger Niello of Roseville and Democrat Lori Wilson of Suisun City proposed bills to make sure that vehicular manslaughter cases that went through a diversion program didn’t fall completely through the cracks.

Right now, if a driver gets granted diversion by a judge, they don’t even get points against their license. That means someone who receives a traffic ticket gets punished more harshly than a driver who kills someone.

Both of their bills just died.

That leaves five bills standing. Of those, three have been weakened significantly.

For example: A bill from Republican Assemblymember Tom Lackey of Kern County would have made any vehicular homicide conviction count as three points against a drivers’ record, rather than two.

Now, the bill instead proposes making gross vehicular manslaughter (a more serious conviction) while intoxicated a three-point penalty.

Only two bills are largely intact.

For years, Democratic Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris of Orange County has been trying to bring California in line with much of the rest of the country and require all drivers convicted of a DUI to install an in-car breathalyzer, called an ignition interlock device. Most states have such a requirement already. California lawmakers have tried and failed a couple times to mandate them for all DUIs here too.

As of now, they’re only required for repeat offenses or crashes with injuries, a weaker standard that California courts have often failed to enforce.

Democratic Assemblymember Nick Schultz’s bill would crack down on repeat drunk drivers, letting prosecutors charge a third DUI within 10 years as a felony. Currently, someone typically can’t be charged with the higher-level offense until they get their fourth DUI in a decade. And the bill would also increase penalties for some repeat intoxicated drivers.

The surviving bills will now move to the full chamber for the final round of votes this year in the Capitol. We’ll keep you updated on what happens to them.