A file photo of a green truck driving on Interstate 5 in California.

Loren Chow looked in the rearview mirror and had a terrifying realization.

We're going to get hit.

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There's nothing I can do to get out of this.

Traffic outside Fresno had slowed. A semitruck loaded with fertilizer from Missouri, cruising at 65 miles per hour, hadn't. By the time the driver, Baljit Singh, hit the brakes, it was too late. A fully loaded big rig traveling at that speed takes the length of nearly two football fields to stop.

Chow, his wife and their 17-year-old son were headed home from a college visit in June 2022. Singh's red Freightliner smashed into the back of their SUV and flipped it. Jenny Chow died. Law enforcement said Singh caused the crash by driving too fast.

Loren Chow can't talk about the details of the collision because of an active lawsuit against Singh, the trucking companies and vehicle manufacturers. But court filings, police reports and driving records lead to a simple conclusion:

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If the California Department of Motor Vehicles had done its job, Jenny Chow would still be alive.

That's because in July 2021 -- 11 months before he killed Chow -- Singh let his semitruck drift over the median on Merle Haggard Drive in Kern County on his way to an Amazon distribution center, killing a 26-year-old man on a motorcycle.

The collision report from that crash shows police found pages from a log book, meant to keep track of Singh's hours behind the wheel, "ripped into small pieces" in an overhead compartment. Investigators with the California Highway Patrol alleged that Singh was fatigued at the time of the crash after driving more than the 12-hour limit and recommended he be charged with vehicular manslaughter.

But while the DMV knew about the earlier fatal crash and had the authority to suspend Singh's driving privileges, it let him continue to drive a big rig until he killed again.

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"The death was completely avoidable. That accident never should have happened," Chow said, barely choking back grief during an interview in his Bay Area living room, which is blanketed in smiling photos of Jenny and their two boys.

"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," Chow said. "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."

A CalMatters investigation found that the DMV often lets professional drivers with a history of dangerous behavior behind the wheel stay on the road and command massive vehicles -- buses filled with passengers, semis packed with goods, and tankers loaded with hazardous chemicals -- even after a fatal crash.

Under California law, a truck driver convicted of manslaughter is disqualified from driving big rigs for 12 months. And any driver convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter is generally supposed to receive a three-year license revocation. But criminal cases can drag out, sometimes for years. Singh wasn't convicted of manslaughter in Kern and Fresno counties until 2024. It was only then that the DMV took his license. Singh and his attorney did not respond to requests for........

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