The Liberty Daily 
(The Daily Caller)—Semi-truck drivers with vehicular manslaughter charges in the state of California remained able to operate big rigs on the road only to kill again, according to an investigation from CalMatters.
The outlet examined several cases involving commercially-licensed drivers who retained their licenses despite causing fatal collisions on the road. Not only did these drivers stay behind the wheel but often caused additional deaths with their massive vehicles, the seventh and latest investigation in CalMatters’ “License to Kill” series published on Oct. 19 found.
The report alleged that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) allowed the perpetrators of this vehicular violence to fall through the cracks.
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One victim’s husband, Loren Chow, is involved in an ongoing lawsuit with the California DMV after such a semi-truck driver rammed into his family’s SUV in 2022, causing the death of his 53-year-old wife Jenny Chow, CalMatters reported.
“I would have had my partner still. We’d be a family of four. Jenny would have seen Dylan and Tyler graduate from high school,” Mr. Chow said in the article. “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.”
In an earlier article in the series published in June 2025, the California DMV alleged that law enforcement agencies and California court systems were at fault for not reporting vehicular manslaughter charges to them, an earlier article in the series from CalMatters reported in June 2025.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles and California Highway Patrol did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Baljit Singh, the semi-truck driver involved in the crash that took Jenny Chow’s life, previously killed a 26-year-old man on a bicycle in a hit-and-run in 2021, yet remained on the road, CalMatters found. However, the California DMV did not take away Singh’s license until 2024, after he was convicted for his crimes, CalMatters reported on Oct. 19. Singh’s nationality and immigration status are unclear.
CalMatters reported on four additional cases involving truck drivers who remained on the road despite history of reckless driving that led to deaths. These drivers had court records with histories of speeding and causing catastrophic collisions yet receiving no suspensions of their license from the DMV, the latest entry in the “License to Kill” series noted.
Another driver, Marco Rodriguez let his tractor-trailer drift onto the shoulder while speeding down Interstate 10 and struck Jon Israel with the semi’s massive side mirror, the outlet reported. Israel, had pulled his overheated tow-truck to the side of the road when the semi-truck veered. Rodriguez did not stop police reports say and Israel died on the roadway, CalMatters reported.
Rodriguez kept driving commercial vehicles even after the fatal crash and eventual manslaughter conviction. Police ticketed him on four separate occasions for unsafe driving in commercial vehicles — three counts of speeding and a lane violation — yet the DMV still renewed Rodriguez’s trucking license in March of this year, CalMatters reported citing police reports and driving records from the DMV.
This comes after the California DMV illegally issued 17,000 commercial drivers licenses to dangerous foreign national drivers which were audited and ordered to be revoked by the Trump administration on Nov. 12, 2025, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced at the time. The DOT then sent a non-compliance letter to California for failure to revoke these licenses at the beginning of 2026, and the White House announced an executive order requiring drivers pass an English proficiency test before receiving commercial drivers licenses.
“It’s reckoning day for [Democratic Gov.] Gavin Newsom and California. Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again,” DOT Secretary Sean Duffy said in a January press release. “Gavin Newsom has failed to do so — putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested numerous foreign nationals with commercial drivers licenses who’ve lived undocumented in the United States and caused catastrophic collisions on American roads.
One such illegal alien, Sukhdev Singh allegedly caused a traffic accident that left a U.S. citizen hospitalized and in critical condition after Singh obtained a Commercial Driver’s License in New York before crashing a semi-truck in Indiana, the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively learned in March.
A truck driver convicted of manslaughter is banned from driving big rigs for 12 months, according to California state law. But criminal cases can drag out, for years — allowing drivers to remain on the road, CalMatters reported.
Between 2015-2024, ten percent of the total 39,702 fatalities on California roads were as the result of crashes involving large trucks, recent data from the DOT found.
