StreetSmart 16: Damian Kevitt at the Legislature’s 11th Hour

It is hard for me to believe that in the dozen years since Streetsblog Los Angeles launched the Damien Talks podcast, that I’ve never had Damian Kevitt, the executive director and founder of Streets Are for Everyone (SAFE), as a guest on that podcast, SGV Connect, What’s Next, or StreetSmart. Well, that ends today.

The theme for this week’s podcast is the end of the legislative session. Including today, there is just over a week left before the legislature goes home at the end of the month.

We discuss Senate Bill 1013, which aims to regulate Flock cameras but could impact various automated enforcement systems. If the difference between Flock cameras and the ones used for traffic enforcement is unclear to you, Andrew Wright with Calbike wrote an explainer on the difference for Streetsblog earlier this year.

Assembly Bill 311, the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act, that incentivizes safe driving through insurance discounts which was thought to be defeated but may rise at the 11th hour. 

We also discuss Senate Bill 1167 and Assembly Bill 2346, which address e-bike and e-moto regulations, noting improvements and potential conflicts. SB 1167 has been widely supported by the advocacy community for its effort to categorize and regulate e-bike/e-moto sales. AB 2346 has been less popular because of some provisions which are seen as dangerous to the growth of e-bike sales, but recent amendments have made it more palatable.

Locally, SAFE’s initiatives include providing free bike valet services at the Long Beach Amphitheater and Hollywood Bowl, with plans for Dodger Stadium.

Listeners will note that the vibe of this discussion is a little more relaxed than usual. Kevitt and I have known each other for over a decade after a hit-and-run crash took part of his leg while he was bicycling in Griffith Park. The picture of a “happy warrior” Kevitt used his tragedy to become one of the loudest voices pushing for safe streets for all road users.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.

And last, catch up on old episodes or subscribe: Streetsblog CAL, Apple, Spotify, Libsyn.

Damien Newton: So I’ve done like four or five different themed podcasts over the years, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever interviewed you. I think this is the first time we’ve ever done a Damia/en Squared podcast, unless I’m mistaken.

Damian Kevitt: No, I don’t recall any other Damia/en Squared. Did we do? Maybe you were at one of our die-ins or something like that. You did a little, small interview.

Newton: Yeah, but we never used the audio for those on the website. It was just to get the quotes. So, yeah, I’ve been to several die-ins over the years. We were on the steps of City Hall, I think, down in L.A.

Kevitt: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Newton: Well, anyway, for those listening, this is the Streetsblog California StreetSmart podcast. This is the first podcast of our fall session. We have a few things planned. We’re going to be talking about weatherproofing with Metrolink. Obviously, we’re going to talk about the legislative session a lot, and of course, some of the things from here will be repodcast with the SGV Connect podcast and vice versa.

But we’re at the point in the legislature where there are no more hearings. So, if your favorite—or least favorite—piece of legislation needed to go through another hearing, it’s done. The list is narrowed down.

Assuming I get this up the day we record it, which is Wednesday the 19th, there are only eight more days, including today, of the legislature being in business before bills go to the governor’s desk.

I’m here live with Damian Kevitt of Streets Are For Everyone, and they’ve been very busy this session. He’s been very busy this session, and we’re going to talk about where we are.

So let’s start with—we did do a pre-show, and you told me about a piece of legislation I wasn’t actually aware of that seems to be targeted at Flock cameras, but could have some wider-ranging implications. So why don’t you tell us what’s going on?

Kevitt: Yeah, this has been a bit of a sleeper bill because it doesn’t obviously affect road safety, but it does. And that is Cervantes’ Senate Bill 1013.

Really, the intention of the bill is to put some checks on and rein in the broadness of the use of Flock cameras—to put some privacy checks in there. I’m not personally opposed to that concept.

The problem is that the language, as it was written, would affect the use of license plate-reading cameras for bus-lane enforcement, bike-lane enforcement, automated speed enforcement, and red-light cameras.

They’re all using similar technology—not the same purpose, but similar technology. All of those systems, of course, are not for broad mass surveillance used by police departments. Those are for road safety or parking enforcement. But it’s the same basic technology, and again, the wording was very broad in this particular bill.

Last year, the bill came up and kind of died. It didn’t go very far. And this year, we realized fairly late in the legislative season that it was already in the other house—the Assembly. We realized this actually has a chance of getting through, especially with the amount of backlash on Flock and concern in the media. And then we realized that, yeah, it could literally kill almost every single automated enforcement system, whether it’s parking or traffic enforcement.

Newton: Right. And the concerns that people have with Flock—a lot of the privacy concerns—are not necessarily things that would roll over into, say, Hayden AI’s way of doing things…the way the information’s shared, the way the plates are shared.

Because I understand the concerns about Flock, and probably agree with them. I haven’t spent a ton of time on it, but I do believe in not sharing information that could get people in trouble over, you know, something unrelated to traffic offenses.

But I also, after 2020, after the Black Lives Matter movement, we all seemed to agree we wanted fewer interactions between traffic enforcement officers and drivers to reduce bias and all of that. So unless we’re just giving up on traffic enforcement altogether, I don’t know how we take what we learned from Black Lives Matter and apply it to traffic safety.

Kevitt: Yeah. I mean, obviously, there’s a lot that’s changing in this area. The use of technology for enforcement purposes—and I say that in the very broadest sense—is a rapidly evolving area.

Flock cameras have jumped onto the scene and become very popular, really just in a matter of a few years. And this is not uncommon when you have newer technologies being introduced: legislation takes a little bit to catch up to them.

And the question is, how do you do that balance correctly?

I know that in the bills that we have worked on—Assembly Bill 645 and a couple of its cousins, Senate Bill 720 (which is the red-light camera reform bill)—we have made sure there’s a tremendous amount of privacy safeguards put into those bills: limiting how long the data can be kept, limiting who has access to that data, and, provided that those laws are being followed, making sure that those safeguards are in place.

And that’s, of course, the other part: making sure that government agencies—the Department of Transportation or Public Works Department—are following them correctly.

But provided they are following what’s written in the bill, you have all of those safeguards in place. It’s not allowed to be shared with, let’s say, an ICE agency.

And a lot of the concern is connected with ICE. Flock cameras don’t have that. So when you start introducing outside changes to address Flock cameras, and they are in conflict with laws and bills that have already been passed on automated enforcement for speed or parking, you end up killing the entire system.

Newton: And to be clear, this bill has passed everything it needs to pass except for the full Senate. Do I have that correct? It was an Assembly bill?

Kevitt: No, it is a Senate bill.

Newton: Senate bill.

Kevitt: So, on the floor, we have managed—and there’s quite a bit of concerted effort. We alerted some of the manufacturers, or the vendors, I should say, who would be affected. We’ve alerted other legislators whose bills would have been badly affected. We’ve been working with Streets For All and other organizations to sort of—not a well-coordinated effort, but coordinated effort.

I would like to say well-coordinated, but, you know, a lot of these—

Newton: Last-second efforts are just as well-coordinated as they can be.

I’m not that far removed from my lobbyist days to remember the, “Oh my God, what’s going on right now? We need to get our butts together,” sort of end-of-the-session lobbying. Although that was in New Jersey, so at least I had a smaller state.

Kevitt: Yes.

Anyway, yeah, there’s definitely been a coordinated effort on addressing some of these issues. They’re very much at the last minute. Honestly, it was going into Appropriations, just finished the last committee, when we all sort of realized at the same time that we’ve got a problem on our hands.

The good news is there have been some fairly major amendments taken. There is really one last amendment that we are asking for, and hopefully in the next day we should have that amendment done. And if we have dodged that bullet—in which case, SAFE, we’ve been opposed unless amended, and a number of other organizations with us on that—we will remove that “oppose unless amended.”

I am going to review it. I might even consider supporting it. I have to just review it in a new unit of time, and then it goes on to the governor. And, you know, it’s possible it’ll actually get passed.

Newton: I mean, the backlash against Flock has been a national story, so it’d probably be good politics for a governor that’s, you know, might be looking at some of these signings or not signings as a way to make a last statement before he faces a new set of voters.

Did I phrase that? Did I phrase that correctly?

Kevitt: As we all know, yes. The writing is on the wall, and the question is how he’s positioning himself to try to do that.

Newton: All right. So, changing gears a little bit.

For anyone that does not know, SAFE—as you could probably guess from the acronym—street and traffic safety is at the core of what they do. A lot of the legislation that they’ve sponsored and worked on this year has dealt directly with that.

Some of it is still moving. Some of it is not, which was really sad when the super-speeders bill was not pushed forward.

But anyway, we’re going to try to focus on the positive.

If you looked at today’s headline stack in Streetsblog California today, you saw there was a piece from CalMatters that basically said the legislature seemed poised to really deal with safety and traffic safety issues this year, and for the most part they haven’t moved forward.

I think five of the 18 bills that CalMatters was tracking, including a lot of DUI legislation, aren’t moving forward. But there’s still some good stuff happening.

So why don’t we talk a little bit about that? You had mentioned AB 311. Why don’t you quickly tell us what it is and where it’s going?

Kevitt: You know, you cued me up beautifully. This is a wonderful cue-up, but AB 311 might be dead.

Newton: Oh, no!

Kevitt: It’s one of our top-priority bills. But you know what? This is a great conversation to have because it might not be dead. I know, this is the—cue the spooky music—it might be alive.

Newton: If we were on Zencastr, I actually have a spooky music button, but I don’t have it on Zoom.

Kevitt: So AB 311 is Assemblymember McKinnor’s bill. We have been the primary sponsor on that. Streets For All has also been a sponsor on it.

It’s called the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026. The worst possible name we could think of. This bill—it literally, you’re just like, “What? What is this? This makes no sense.”

But let me tell you what this is.

In every single state across the U.S. except for California—because we are special. California is a special state. We hear that a lot. We’re very special in ways that Mother loves.

Every single state across the U.S. except California allows a safe-driving incentive program as part of your insurance.

What that means is you can opt in. They’re always an opt-in. You can opt in to having your driving monitored by the insurance company: the way you drive, your braking, your speeding, your texting and driving, and things like that—things that are indicative of whether or not you are likely to get into a crash.

If you are speeding, you are more likely to get into a crash. If you are texting and driving, you are more likely to get into a crash.

With safe-driving incentives, if you are found to be a safe driver—in other words, you’re not generally engaging in a lot of these activities—you get a larger discount on your insurance rate.

And what’s actually more effective about it is you get feedback. It can let you know, like, “Hey, that trip—you actually had a lot of speeding on that trip,” or, “Notice that you were hard-braking a lot more. Back off from the cars in front of you and give them a little bit more space, so you don’t have to do so much hard braking.”

So it actually, almost in a way, gamifies your driving for safety.

And that’s how it’s done in other states. Different states have different programs, so not every state is the same.

California is the only state that doesn’t allow it to incentivize safe driving. We have plenty of penalties that we work on increasing—enforcement and increasing penalties and things like that.

This literally pays you, in a way, for driving safer.

So that’s the oversimplification of this bill. It is quite technical. There are a lot of reasons why it’s a difficult bill to get through. I’m happy to discuss that. I just want to know how many hours of podcast we should include in that.

Newton: That’ll be the follow-up for our Christmas—excuse me, holiday—break in December. We’ll just do a five-hour podcast, and I’ll release an hour of it a day.

Kevitt: There we go. Just to bore the minds of our listeners.

By the way, this is what happens when you get Damia/en Squared podcasts. You get two Damia/ens riffing off each other.

Newton: Yeah, don’t worry. And when I do the intro, when I record it later—because I always record the intros after the podcast, and I sometimes like to be like, “Hey, something really interesting happens at the 23rd minute” or something like that—I’m going to mention our shared history, including, I believe, you got booed talking about your car crash at my neighborhood council once.

So, you know—

Kevitt: That was—

Newton: Let’s be clear: the car crashed into him, and he was not at fault. But it was—we’ve had Damien and I have been through it together.

Kevitt: We have. We’ve been in the trenches.

So AB 311: it is officially held in suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee. That’s—I’m sorry, I don’t really want to say too much because I don’t want to jinx it.

It might actually be pulled off the suspense file by leadership, and I’m supposed to have another call on this. It’s been—the amount of work on this bill has probably been more than several years combined, negotiating, working with various different entities, etc.

So we were really bummed to see it held in suspense. It’s the first year that we’ve done this bill, so we were willing to come back a second year. But again, leadership might be pulling it off suspense, which is almost unheard of.

Newton: Yeah. So, for anyone who’s not familiar with the legislature, committees can put a bill in suspense, which is not the same as defeating it. It’s also not the same as passing it. It’s just sort of saying that, for whatever reason, they didn’t vote on it.

And yes, sometimes leadership can then take a bill that’s on suspense and pull it to the floor, which is something that they can’t really do with bills that have been outright defeated.

And there’s, of course, other mechanisms with amendments and all of that to get language moved. But usually, when we see something’s been put in suspense in a committee, we move it down to the “it’s not moving anywhere” category.

So it would be a surprise, but not unprecedented.

That would be cool.

Kevitt: Yeah. You know, it’s kind of like a zombie bill. It just refuses to die, and it loves brains.

Newton: Okay, yeah. Save it for our October podcast.

All right, let’s go from brains to e-bikes and e-motos.

I guess there are two pieces of legislation that are still alive. Of course, there’s a bunch of different pieces of legislation that are alive around this, but two that are sort of the major ones: one by Catherine Blakespear, senator from Encinitas, and one from Lori Wilson, the Assembly Transportation Committee chair from Suisun City.

Different parts of the state. There’s some overlap in the bills. There’s some conflict in the bills.

Can you just give us an overview of what we’re looking at here?

Overall, it seems like both pieces of legislation are good at this point. 1167 has sort of been the darling of advocacy groups for a while, but in the pre-show, you were telling me that 2346, via amendments, has been much improved.

Kevitt: Yeah. So 2346 is Assemblymember Wilson’s bill. She is the chair of the Transportation Committee, so she has quite a bit of power.

The intent of this bill was to sort of address the patchwork of regulations that were coming into play across the state.

You were having a lot of cities that were sort of setting their own guidelines and regulations: e-bikes can go this fast, e-bikes can go that fast, you have to do this, you have to do that.

And really, the intent was to sort of unify that across the state, set state precedents.

That said, it received quite a bit of backlash, especially on the attempts to lower the speed limits for some of the changes to the three-class system and lower the speed limits.

There was also some backlash on the requirements for certain things like lights on the e-bikes. Honestly, I was not as concerned about that.

It’s such a funny area there. This is a funny area. Funny, not laughing.

Newton: Yeah, you didn’t want to spend your entire session talking about e-bikes instead of DUIs and all the other stuff going on in the world.

Kevitt: Oh my God, there are so many bills this year, and you probably know about a lot of them, but some of them you probably don’t.

There’s a tremendous number of road safety bills, much more than previous years, and a lot of that thanks to CalMatters.

But yeah, there was a lot of backlash on Wilson’s bill. They made some pretty major modifications, and most of that backlash has sort of settled.

We went neutral on it. We were opposed unless amended. Streets For All went neutral. I actually don’t know if PeopleForBikes went neutral or not. I think they are still opposed on certain parts of it, but less strongly worded opposed, if you could say that.

CalBike, I think CalBike went neutral on it.

Anyway, that’s a decent bill now.

We’ve got 1167.

I’m sorry, my dog is howling in the background there, which I hope we can’t hear him.

Newton: So Zoom is doing its job today.

Kevitt: Okay, good.

So there is, of course, our bill, which is the best bill ever.

And our bill is—I do want to say that we have been working hand in glove with Streets For All, with CalBike, with PeopleForBikes on this bill, 1167.

This is the Blakespear bill. This really addresses a lot of the issues, maybe not all of them, but a lot of the issues centered around e-motos and e-bikes.

And I think listeners have heard about this before, so I won’t really re-summarize it there.

But it definitely addresses those issues. That one’s moving forward.

We just actually found a last-minute little quirk.

“Quirk.” I like to call that what it is.

1167 and 2346 both have language, and they are talking about labeling of e-bikes, and they are not the same language. They’re not even in the same code section.

So we’re trying to figure out sort of the best way to address this so that we don’t have a conflict of bills.

Is it a conflict of bills? This is the bigger question.

Is it going to cause a conflict the way it is set up? How do we move forward so that we don’t get our bill—our bill being 1167—vetoed because it’s in conflict in a slight degree with another bill?

Newton: And that’s a concern because the last thing you want to do is give someone an excuse to veto something. You try to do it the other way.

Kevitt: Yeah, and the governor can be—governor works in mysterious ways sometimes, and not always in a good way.

So, yeah, we don’t really want to give that opportunity.

It would be so frustrating because we’ve gotten this thing through so much.

We actually had opposition from the motorcycle lobbying association. They finally pulled their opposition. They’re now neutral on that.

Newton: Oh, that’s good. I remember reading one of their op-eds about it—I think a motorcycle magazine—when I was doing the headlines roundup once and being like, “I was not expecting that.”

Kevitt: Yeah, we weren’t either, and we were a little frustrated.

We accepted a number of amendments that they requested that made sense. We did not accept the requested amendment—they wanted to basically, which was a core tenet of this bill, require that you can only call an e-bike an e-bike, a Class 1, 2 or 3 e-bike.

That’s only what you can call an e-bike, and technically, calling anything else an e-bike would be a violation of legal codes. I forget exactly which.

We had some amendments on how to do that, but the point is: an e-bike is an e-bike, and if it’s not an e-bike, you can’t call it that.

Newton: All right. So, since I don’t use Zoom very often, I don’t have a Pro plan. We have five minutes left, and we wanted to transition to something a little bit more fun that you guys do that’s not just legislation.

SAFE has a number of programs. If you’re in the greater L.A. area, their fundraisers are bike rides and 5/10K half marathons, and I’ve done both over the years, so it’s one place you can find me in the wild.

But we were talking about bike valets, and that you guys have been working very hard with some of the major venues in Greater Los Angeles to make it easier for people to bike there.

So why don’t we talk a little bit about that, and then I will make fun of the Dodgers, and you’ll defend them.

Kevitt: Good, I love that.

You know, gosh, we should make fun of the Dodgers just because everyone likes to make fun of someone that’s a winner, right?

They have been frustrating to work with, though.

Newton: Be nice.

Kevitt: Yeah.

So one of our key strategies is: How do we make it easier, more inviting for people to bicycle to venues and locations? How do we encourage people to get out of their cars and walk, bike, or take public transit?

And a lot of that has to do with, of course, the heavy lifting of adding more public transit. And that’s important.

And that’s—you know, there’s been a lot of stuff in the news recently on cuts to public transit funding, and that’s incredibly important.

But there’s also the fun, more subtle side of all of this, which is: How do we make it cool and fun and inviting to bicycle to major venues and get people out of their cars?

Everyone who has been to a major venue knows that they make a boatload of money on the parking.

Newton: It’s been 20-some years, but I worked with a group on the East Coast that did a report on what makes stadiums fit in best with their neighborhood.

Like, what is one thing that combines the stadiums? You know, Wrigley Field in Chicago, or the Giants stadium in downtown San Francisco. What is it that makes those stadiums fit in best with the community?

And the thing that unified them was those are the stadiums where the team doesn’t own the parking.

Kevitt: Interesting. Interesting. I had no idea about that.

Newton: Yeah, it was done when the Mets were moving stadiums because the New York Parks Department owns the parking around Citi Field, formerly Shea Stadium.

But yeah, it was—I can’t find it. I keep looking for the report. I remember doing a press release about it, but I haven’t been able to re-find it.

It’s been—I mean—a quarter of a century, so it might not even be true anymore. But it was fascinating.

Kevitt: Yeah.

So SAFE recently got the contract to provide bike valet for every single show at the Long Beach Amphitheater.

There are actually two types of shows at the Long Beach Amphitheater, but a number of shows at the Long Beach Amphitheater. They’ve got some outside-venue shows that you don’t have the contract for.

But that is a way to encourage people to go to the Long Beach Amphitheater. By the way, it’s a brand-new amphitheater. They just revamped it. It’s huge. I think it’s like 17,000—I think that’s off the top of my head—seat music venue right next to the Queen Mary.

And we are now starting to pick up.

At first, the first few shows there were 12 and 15 and 18, and I heard last night’s show had over 100 cyclists parking at our bike valet.

It’s free. So, you know, if you want to go, and Long Beach is so bike-friendly, you can get there fairly easily by bicycle, and it’s free.

Newton: All right, I’ve got the less-than-a-minute flashing.

So you’re doing something—you also have free bike valet at the Hollywood Bowl, and Dodger Stadium is coming next year, maybe.

Kevitt: So, Hollywood Bowl, we are working out which shows for this year as a pilot. We are in talks with operations. We will be able to announce those shows very soon.

Free bike valet.

And we are in talks with Dodger Stadium, and that’s been two years’ worth of work to get to the stage we’re at.

I was hoping to have a Bike to Dodger Stadium day this year. I don’t know if we’re going to get that. I think it might happen next year.

But we are still moving forward on that.