California Highway Patrol identifies safety violations in UC Santa Cruz bus fleet 

The California Highway Patrol identified UC Santa Cruz’s transit services as an “imminent danger to public safety” after conducting inspections on nine vehicles last week, according to Lookout Santa Cruz.

The inspections followed the death of bus driver Dan Stevenson, who succumbed to injuries caused by a Dec. 12 bus crash on campus that injured six other individuals, according to Lookout Santa Cruz (LSC).

California Highway Patrol (CHP) found that five of the vehicles had to be taken out of service for repairs. Of those five vehicles, four had brakes out of adjustment and three had inoperable emergency exits. 

“The vehicle violations should have been detected during an effective maintenance program and driver’s daily vehicle inspections. Carriers’ maintenance program was assigned an Unsatisfactory rating due to the condition of the regulated equipment,” the CHP report states.

The cause of the Dec. 12 crash has yet to be identified, according to LSC. UCSC police are continuing to investigate. 

UC Davis to build bird flight research center

UC Davis will build a bird flight research center this fall with a grant of nearly $3 million from the Department of Defense, according to UC Davis news. The center will be the first of its kind in the country.

The effort is led by director of UC Davis’s California Raptor Center Michelle Hawkins and assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Christina Harvey. The center will use motion capture technologies to image birds in flight and help develop uncrewed aerial systems or drones for tasks like delivering packages or fighting wildfires.

“If you want an aircraft that can fly through the forest or perform very quick maneuvers, or adjust to different conditions, birds are really the best example for how we can do that,” Harvey said to CBS News.

Harvey helped write the grant with the Department of Defense, according to CBS News, then recruited Hawkins for the effort. While the birds will be studied to aid aerial engineering, Hawkins also plans to use imagery of the birds to identify deficits and target rehabilitation efforts.

The facility is in the planning stage and is set to break ground at the raptor center in the fall.

A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the Feb. 8, 2024, print edition of the Daily Nexus.

Sindhu Ananthavel

Sindhu Ananthavel (she/they) is the Lead News Editor for the 2023-24 school year. Previously, Ananthavel was the Deputy News Editor for the 2022-23 school year, the Community Outreach News Editor for the 2021-22 school year and an assistant news editor for the 2021-22 school year. She can be reached at news@dailynexus.com.