Early exposure to lead has long been associated with cognitive problems. Writing last year in Mother Jones, Irvine journalist Kevin Drum said such exposure has been linked to lower IQs, violent crime and attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder. The gradual increase in IQ across the world has been linked to new laws against lead-based paint and piping.

But in California, state law only requires lead testing for children who live in or frequently visit buildings built before the crackdown on lead-based paint began in the 1970s and for those who get benefits under government welfare programs.

“Given the ages of California’s infrastructure, lead exposure risks are ubiquitous,” Quirk told Kaiser Health News. “The current screening process only tests certain children. Better data can help us better identify clusters and arm the state with a thorough, more comprehensive response.”

In Flint, national media have focused for two years on the problems with water supplies created when Flint city leaders stopped using water piped in from Detroit’s water system to save money by using cheaper water from the polluted Flint River and other local sources. That led to a public health emergency being declared after the supply change apparently sent the number of children with elevated exposure to lead in blood tests soaring to 5 percent, twice the national norm. In December, Congress appropriated $120 million to help Flint deal with the problem.

State lead problems concentrated in Fresno area

But shortly afterward, Reuters issued a massive study based on lead exposure in the blood of children in ZIP code-based data compiled by the federal government in 21 states, including California. It found thousands of communities with lead problems as bad or worse than Flint’s. It identified 13 ZIP codes in California with elevated lead exposure among children. CalWatchdog was the first to report on Reuters’ specific findings about the Golden State.

Quirk’s district is just south of Fruitvale (ZIP code 94601), the Oakland community with the highest percentage of children exposed to excessive lead: 7.57 percent. Next worse was the Sand City-Seaside community (ZIP 93955) east of Monterey. The rate was 7.44 percent.

Nine ZIP codes in the Fresno area had problems worse than Flint: The worst off was Selma, southeast of Fresno (ZIP 93662), where 6.62 percent of children had excessive exposure.

The last two California communities with high children lead exposure were south-central Los Angeles (ZIP 90011), with a rate of 5.28 percent, and Rosemead-South San Gabriel (ZIP 91770), where the rate was 5.17 percent.

It’s not clear yet how much support or opposition Quirk is likely to attract. Reuters’ report didn’t spur anything like a Flint-style reaction among the California media. Meanwhile, health insurance lobbyists are likely to say that the state should pay the tab for a state-mandated test. Medi-Cal now pays for lead screening of children whose families receive government assistance, while health insurers pay for the screening – and pass along the cost through premiums – of children whose families have insurance.

Following a nationwide trend, traffic deaths in California have spiked, alarming analysts and prompting fresh questions about technological distractions like smartphones, and fueling debate over how policymakers can or should respond. 

The news was relayed in a report by the National Safety Council. “The study shows that in California, traffic deaths rose 14 percent in 2016 over the previous year, and 19 percent over the past two years. The national death toll rose 6 percent during the past year and 14 percent over the past two, marking the largest two-year jump in the U.S. since 1964,” the San Francisco Chronicle noted. 

“The report, based on preliminary estimates of traffic fatalities involving motor vehicles on public roads, highways and private property, surprised state traffic safety officials. […] While they have not yet analyzed the numbers, traffic experts pointed to distracted driving and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and speeding as leading causes in the spike in deaths.”

Not in a decade have nationwide numbers turned so sour. “Fatalities rose 6 percent in 2016, reaching an estimated 40,200 deaths compared to 37,757 deaths the previous year,” the Associated Press observed. “The last time there were more than 40,000 fatalities in a single year was in 2007, just before the economy tanked. There were 41,000 deaths that year. The increase came as Americans drove more last year – a 3 percent increase in total miles.”

Carelessness and crackdowns

Many drivers, especially younger ones, have appeared to give up on the idea of driving without any tech-fueled distractions. “A recent report from the American Automobile Association says that group of young adults exhibits far more risky behavior behind the wheel than any other age category,” the Rapid City Journal noted. “In a report released this month by AAA, young millennial drivers were found to engage in the riskiest driving behavior of any age group, with 88 percent of 19- to 24-year-olds admitting they had exhibited at least one risky driving behavior in the past 30 days, such as speeding, running red lights or using a cellphone while driving. The report was based on a survey of 2,511 licensed drivers ages 16 and older.”

Fueled by dismaying statistics, California lawmakers have already attempted to crack down on cellphone use in cars on state streets. Assembly Bill 1785, introduced by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, imposed fines for using unmounted phones in any way for any reason. “Eighty percent of vehicle crashes involve some kind of driver inattention, according to the California Office for Traffic Safety. And up to 3,000 people nationwide are killed in crashes where driver distractions are involved,” Capital Public Radio observed. Quirk’s law “covers all smartphone uses, including mapping applications and music playlists. Existing law already bans drivers from texting and calling unless they use a hands-free device.”

City strictures

Activists behind the Vision Zero Network, a fatality-reduction campaign adopted by cities including San Francisco, have pushed for lower speeds in municipalities. San Francisco figures diverged from California’s spike upward. “The number of traffic deaths in 2016 was 30, a slight decline from 2015 and 2014 when 31 people were killed in each of those years in motor vehicle collisions,” the Chronicle noted. “The figures also showed a one-year decrease in pedestrian deaths with 16 in 2016 compared with 20 in 2015.”

On the other hand, while some analysts have suggested Vision Zero hasn’t proven adequate to lower fatalities, others have taken the opposite position, questioning whether it has any justifiable purpose in constraining city rules. “Some say cities are using traffic data to justify raking in millions in traffic fines,” the Washington Post reported. “Others contend that the proposals go too far, arguing that lowering speeds too much has a significant impact on travel times. Why, for example, set a 15 mph limit around schools when the facilities are closed, they say.” 

Amid lingering criticism and doubts about the feasibility of enforcement, Californians braced for new legislation taking effect in January that will ban almost all handling of cellphones behind the wheel.

Beginning Sunday, law enforcement will be authorized to punish drivers using the devices in accordance with Assembly Bill 1785, authored by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward. “The whole idea is you don’t have the phone in your hand, period,” he told the Sacramento Bee.  

Quirk’s bill, AB1785, plugged what safety officials called a major loophole in the state’s groundbreaking hands-free cellphone laws. Those laws ban talking and texting on handheld phones while driving. But any other handheld use of a phone, such as shooting videos or scanning Facebook, has been technically legal.

Growing risk

Statistics have shown that smartphones make life on the road more dangerous. “The California Department of Motor Vehicles statistics show that in 2015 cellphone distractions while driving caused 12 fatal crashes, 500 injuries and 700 instances of property damage,” Rare observed. Even more recent information has painted a picture of Californians drifting steadily into risky routines. “In a study conducted by the California Office of Traffic Safety in April 2016, at least 12.8 percent of California drivers were observed using a mobile device during the day, up from 9.2 percent in 2015 and eclipsing the previous high of 10.8 percent in 2013,” according to the Turlock Journal. “Due to the difficulty of observing mobile device use in a vehicle, these figures are considered minimums, with actual usage likely several points higher.”

“The OTS study also found that the observed usage rates appear to confirm previous studies, which show more drivers admit to using mobile devices “sometimes” or “regularly” and that fewer drivers believe that talking or texting on a cellphone is a major safety problem. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who say they have been hit or nearly hit by a driver using a cellphone remains steady at nearly 60 percent.”

Although a culture of keeping one eye on the phone and one eye on the road has spread, drivers have not embraced the trend simply for the sake of travel entertainment. Even with GPS, apps have not eliminated the need for basic interactive tasks like following directions, leaving Golden State drivers at risk of citation simply for using their phones as if they were maps. “If you are using your cellphone for directions, it must be placed on the dashboard or windshield of your car,” as the Kern Golden Empire warned. 

Judgment calls

The fines promised to sting multiple industries reliant on drivers legally monitoring and interacting with their smartphones over the course of their daily drives. AB1785 did leave a carveout with affected businesses in mind, allowing motorists to “activate or deactivate a feature or function” of their devices “with the motion of a single swipe or tap of the driver’s finger.” But the narrow rule left many puzzled as to what possible constituency would find the carveout sufficient. “How does a cop distinguish between texting, which you can’t do, and activating or deactivating a feature or function, which you can?” asked the LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero. “Judges will love this law.” Ironically, the number of citations being dismissed in court under the old rules provided an argument in favor of passing AB1785.

Perhaps the gray area surrounding enforcement contributed to the relatively modest size of the fines imposed by the law. “Violators will be subject to a $20 fine for the first offense, with fines going up for additional offenses,” CBS San Francisco reported. But California Highway Patrol Officer Rodney Fitzhugh told ABC 10 “the cost of the ticket is up to the courts and local jurisdictions.”

In an all-too-real conflict between man and machine, a string of high-profile clashes between drones and public servants has helped spur an effort to crack down on the airborne bots in California.

But at the same time, civil libertarian concerns have prompted a parallel controversy over law enforcement’s desire to use more drones to fight crime.

Crossing the line

Along with Golden State legislators, members of California’s Congressional delegation have grown concerned that so-called recreational drones, flown by private citizens, have become a serious threat to the state’s ability to safely operate in its own airspace. “Without common sense rules, I believe it’s only a matter of time before there’s a tragic accident,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in an emailed statement reported by Emergency Management:

“Feinstein and other lawmakers are demanding that regulators revise existing law to plug a loophole sparing recreational drones from the regulations. They are also are seeking the use of software that would prevent drones from flying in prohibited areas.”

In Sacramento, meanwhile, lawmakers faced a battery of drone bills. One group focused on invasions of privacy; as the Orange County Register reported, state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, offered bills aimed at clearing the skies over public schools, prisons and jails — measures that have already passed the state Senate and await a vote in the Assembly appropriations committee. Other bills would extend trespassing and other privacy laws to cover the use of drones over private property and in otherwise private areas. 

Gaines has also partnered up with Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, to target drones flown over wildfires. As CalWatchdog reported previously, drones disrupted aerial firefighting in California four times over the course of the month of July alone. The Gaines-Gatto bills would make that kind of interference a misdemeanor and exempt firefighters from liability for neutralizing offending drones.

A spreading problem

In addition to complicating California’s efforts to fight fires, dismaying drone-related incidents have begun to spread across the country. As the Washington Post noted, “drones have smuggled drugs into an Ohio prison, smashed against a Cincinnati skyscraper […] and nearly collided with three airliners over New York City.”

“Earlier this summer, a runaway two-pound drone struck a woman at a gay pride parade in Seattle, knocking her unconscious. In Albuquerque, a drone buzzed into a crowd at an outdoor festival, injuring a bystander. In Tampa, a drone reportedly stalked a woman outside a downtown bar before crashing into her car.”

But California has remained a drone hotspot a cut above the rest. Drug runners have begun testing out the use of drones to ferry payloads across the border. “Drones as a drug-smuggling tool made news in January when one hauling meth crashed in the parking lot of a Tijuana shopping center, two miles from the U.S. border,” according to U-T San Diego. “It was loaded with about seven pounds of drugs and was likely being ferried from neighborhood to neighborhood, Mexican law enforcement said.”

Just this month, U-T added, two men pleaded guilty to picking up 28 pounds of heroin delivered by drone near Calexico, “a pickup that was captured on Border Patrol cameras on April 28, according to court records.”

Also this month, a helicopter air ambulance taking a patient to the hospital “had to take evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision with a drone aircraft Wednesday afternoon north of Fresno Yosemite International Airport,” according to the Fresno Bee. 

Police interest

The sense of uncertainty pervading the airspace has been compounded by Sacramento’s inability to deal with the prospect of expanded law enforcement drone usage. One bill underscoring the problem, AB56, set out to strike a balance by requiring warrants for drone surveillance over private property and new police standards for privacy, including the storage and deletion of video footage recorded by drone, as the Associated Press noted. 

But the bill hit against opposition from both sides, with the ACLU and law enforcement organizations both expressing displeasure over the attempted compromise. The bill’s author, Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, expressed his frustration to the AP. “There’s a middle ground that nobody likes,” he sighed.