Sign up to receive free weekly updates on California issues in your inbox.A memorial for seven farmworkers killed on the way to work in February in Madera County. California lawmakers acted to regulate the vans that take farmworkers to the fields. However, few vehicles are covered under the regulations now, leaving it less clear who is responsible for workers’ safety.
And it was the kind of tragedy California has been trying to prevent for decades. In 1999, after 13 workers were killed in a single crash, lawmakers ushered in a slew of regulations to make farmworkers’ commutes safer. For a while, it worked. The number of farmworkers who have died in a vehicle regulated by the state since 2000
The Highway Patrol’s farm vehicle safety program now certifies less than 10% of the vehicles it did when the law took effect. Its officers spend more time educating workers to use seat belts than inspecting vans and pulling unsafe ones off the road. van driven by a foreman for the contractor blew a tire and rolled over, killing one worker and injuring six. The borrowed van was missing a seat belt, had bald tires and two of the wheels weren’t properly secured. The driver had a suspended license. Fisher Ranch
Transportation, which include traffic deaths as well as tractor crashes, make up more than a third of all workers’ on-the-job fatalities. Between 2015 and 2022 in California, 58% of agricultural workers who died on the job were killed in transportation incidents, compared with 47% nationwide.
In its first year, the Highway Patrol unit inspected thousands of vehicles operated by employers or their contractors, and certified 1,275. Last year, it conducted 73 inspections andPhotos taken of a vehicle pulled over by California Highway Patrol packed with 10 workers despite only having seats for seven passengers. One worker sits on a bucket while another lies behind the back row.
CalMatters’ analysis of statewide vehicle collision data also found that while there are more crashes involving state-certified farm labor vehicles, injuries and deaths overwhelmingly occur in either vans that the driver didn’t get certified, or smaller vans that The state’s crash data may be an undercount. Not all officers statewide include farm vehicle information when responding to crashes. The data does not include, for example, a crash last October in northern Sonoma County, where a van carrying seven workers ran off the road and hit a tree, before dawn on the way to the Cooley Ranch vineyard near Cloverdale.