Business
Hollywood's stunt-driving industry is dominated by men. These women are fighting for change
Four months after her father died in June 2019, Olivia Summers showed up to an introductory meeting at a production company in Santa Monica.
While discussing her extensive work as a stunt driver on numerous car commercials, one of the producers remarked that he was not aware there were women in the stunt-driving industry.
“We just put a guy in a wig,” Summers recalled the producer saying.
Summers, who had fought hard over the past 15 years to make a name for herself in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, was devastated. Not only did this producer openly admit to “wigging” — a union-prohibited, gender-discriminatory practice where a male stunt performer wears a wig to double for an actress — he acted as if he didn’t even know that drivers like her existed.
Hurt and discouraged, Summers returned to her truck, put the key in the ignition and turned to her biggest supporter — her late father — for guidance. As the engine revved, Summers — who was raised Catholic and makes a sign of the cross before performing stunts — heard her father’s voice.
“He just said, ‘Start an all-female stunt-driving team,’” Summers told The Times. “And that’s how it came about.”
Summers in 2020 founded the Assn. of Women Drivers, billed as “the first and only all female stunt … and performance driving team” in Hollywood. Historically, stunt-driving teams recruited as a unit for commercials, films and/or TV shows have been led by and composed of mostly men.
The goal of the Assn. of Women Drivers, which Summers of Playa Vista runs alongside fellow stunt performer Dee Bryant of View Park-Windsor Hills, is to increase visibility and employment opportunities for female stunt workers.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — which represents all stunt performers — has collected gender information from 4,636 stunt workers in the union. About 22% (1,025) identified as female, according to a source close to the labor organization who was not authorized to comment.
Summers doesn’t hide her frustration at the boys’ club culture of the stunt-driving industry.
“It’s bulls— because a lot of the guys on the team don’t even like each other,” she said. “They’re just trying to keep it that way so none of the work goes to us or any other independent driver out there. It’s super shady. It’s dark.”
Dee Bryant, left, and Olivia Summers smoke the tires of Summers’ Dodge Challenger in Marina del Rey.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Stunt performers of all genders have been striving to get more respect from the industry. They’ve been in the spotlight recently after the Academy of Motion Pictures unveiled a new Oscars category for casting, perceived as a snub to the stunt community, which has long pushed for Academy Awards recognition to no avail.
The lack of appreciation is particularly galling to stunt workers, who risk their safety to make more famous actors look good. Despite strict on-set rules to prevent accidents, stunt performing remains dangerous work, by definition.
Due to the entertainment industry’s reliance on stunning action set pieces, demand for stunt performers’ services remains significant, despite the rise of computer-generated graphics, the looming threat of AI and the occasional stars performing their own death-defying feats.
Combined, Summers and Bryant boast hundreds of credits on commercials, films and TV series, including “CSI,” “9-1-1,” “Bridesmaids” and “L.A.’s Finest.” While executing complex crash and high-speed chase sequences, Summers has doubled for actors such as Sarah Paulson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Ming-Na Wen ; while Bryant has subbed in for Angela Bassett, Regina King and Kerry Washington.
Viewers might have seen Summers weaving through oncoming traffic in an apocalyptic frenzy while doubling for Paulson in the Netflix thriller “Birdbox”; or Bryant zooming through the crowded streets of Hollywood on a motorcycle while doubling for Gabrielle Union during a police pursuit in the pilot episode of “L.A.’s Finest.”
“What dawned on me was the fact that this would create visibility for women and no longer give stunt coordinators, producers, ad agencies … the excuse to wig a male,” Bryant said. “I thought that this would be exactly what we needed to put a stop to that practice.”
Both women were encouraged by their fathers to take up sports such as waterskiing and dirt-biking and learn how to maneuver various types of vehicles from a young age.
Growing up in Toronto, Summers was operating snowmobiles solo by the age of 12. The third child of five, she experienced her fair share of mishaps — flying off the back of her dad’s snowmobile, slicing her hand open in a boating accident, repeatedly trying and failing to stand on water skis until her lips turned blue .
Olivia Summers, left, and Dee Bryant have driven in commercials for various car companies, including Ford.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, Bryant’s father — a Harley guy who belonged to a motorcycle crew — gifted his daughter her first dirt bike at the age of 11. Bryant grew up piloting motorcycles on the sunbaked terrain of California’s San Gabriel Valley.
“My dad bought me a motorcycle, and now I have 13 motorcyles,” Bryant said. “It’s his fault.”
Before long, she set her sights on water sports and eventually the “the big Tonka toys” that rumbled around construction sites.
For now, Bryant and Summers are the only two members of the Assn. of Women Drivers. They do, however, have plans to expand by recruiting drivers specializing in cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes and watercraft.
After catching wind of their efforts, some Hollywood producers at William Morris Endeavor approached Bryant and Summers with a pitch for a reality competition program centered on their search for the most talented women stunt drivers — and asked the duo to hold off on recruiting more members while they shop the idea.
But that hasn’t stopped them from mentoring fellow female stunt drivers looking to carve out space for themselves in the entertainment business. Summers and Bryant said it’s in their best interests to help train aspiring female stunt drivers so that their protégées can lead by example.
“Yesterday I drove two hours to help one of the girls that I’m mentoring buy a stunt car because I want these girls to look good on set,” Bryant said. “It’s a reflection on us if they don’t. Then the coordinator goes, ‘See, there’s no good women drivers.’”
Decatur, Ga.-based stunt driver and motorcyclist Jwaundace Candece — who has worked on “Atlanta,” “WandaVision” and “Baby Driver” — credits Bryant with teaching her how to “ride for the cameras” and pointing her to people who could further her career.
When she was hired by stunt coordinator Darrin Prescott to work on “Baby Driver,” Candece relied on Bryant’s sage advice: “Hold your own, drive like a man and prove them wrong.” Impressed, stunt coordinator Thom Williams tapped Candece for HBO’s “Watchmen.”
Bryant and Summers “are starting something that is innovative and revolutionary,” Candece said. “I hope it’ll open up doors to hire more women, more women of color — more women, period — because that’s what’s needed.”
In addition to wigging, Bryant, Candece and other stunt women of color have had to contend with “paint downs” — or putting white people in brownface or blackface instead of hiring stunt women of color to double for non-white actors. Fewer than 10 years ago, Warner Bros. publicly apologized for casting a white stunt woman to double for a Black guest star in the superhero series “Gotham.”
“I first spoke up against that … maybe 15, 20 years ago, and it’s still happening,” Bryant said. “That’s what happens in this business behind the scenes.”
As onscreen representation for women is shifting and more actresses are being cast in action roles, Hollywood needs to hire more women stunt drivers to double for them.
And it’s not just the stars who require doubles — for every action hero or villain who operates a vehicle onscreen, there are dozens more background drivers populating the streets, called “nondescript drivers.”
It’s especially rare for women stunt performers to get work as nondescript drivers. Bryant estimated that 90% of the time she is tapped for a project, she is in the “hot seat,” doubling for a principal cast member.
“How stupid does it look when you watch the movie, and you’re like, ‘Not one woman cop in 2023?’” Summers said. “When they get out [of their cars], and you just see a bunch of white guys with their guns drawn on the criminal. Come on, that doesn’t look right.”
To address this issue, Bryant called on entertainment companies to employ people to oversee hiring practices in the stunt department and advise the studios to diversify their stunt-driving teams.
The Oscars controversy was just another poke in the eye. After the academy’s recent decision to create a new Oscar for achievement in casting sparked outrage in the stunt community, ABC incorporated a sizzle-reel ode to stunt performers into this year’s Oscars telecast — a move Bryant dismissed as “a joke.”
“I have not watched the Oscars in over 20 years,” Bryant said. “I boycott because I think it’s ridiculous. … We, as stunt performers, are putting our life and limb on the line.”
San José tech company Cisco plans to cut 471 workers in three Bay Area offices, according to layoff notices filed to a state agency.
The company, which provides networking devices along with other services including video conferencing and cybersecurity, told employees in May that it was going to cut fewer than 4,000 jobs or less than 5% of its workforce.
The notices, processed by the California Employment Development Department this week, provide more details about what jobs Cisco will cut in California.
The artificial-intelligence boom has fueled more investments in data centers, commercial real estate and other areas. But advancements in AI tools have also been reshaping jobs, especially in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the tech industry.
Cisco’s layoffs in California impacted workers in its San José, Milpitas and San Francisco offices. The company cut a variety of roles in software engineering, product management, design, business operations and other areas, the notices show.
Cisco said it didn’t have anything additional to share beyond what it published in May about its restructuring plans.
Tech companies have been citing various reasons for layoffs including prioritizing investments in artificial intelligence. As workers use AI-powered tools to generate code, words and other content, some executives have said they don’t need as many employees. There’s also skepticism, though, about how big a role AI is playing at companies with a large amount of workers globally.
From January to May, U.S. technology companies announced 123,653 cuts, up 66% from the same period in 2025, according to a June report from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm said that AI was the leading reason companies cited for cuts but it still isn’t the “jobpocalypse some predicted.”
Meta, Snap, Block, Oracle and Amazon are among tech companies that have announced mass layoffs this year.
Cisco markets itself as a company that “provides critical infrastructure for the AI era” and has benefited from the AI boom, reaching a record revenue of $15.8 billion in the third quarter this year. The company’s net income grew 35% to $3.4 billion year-over-year during that quarter.
Cisco Chief Executive Chuck Robbins told employees in May it’s cutting costs in certain areas while prioritizing other investments. That includes employee use of AI across the company.
He said Cisco will be among winners in the AI era, but that means “making hard decisions — about where we invest, how we’re organized, and how our cost structure reflects the opportunity in front of us.”
As of July 2025, Cisco had roughly 86,200 employees, according to its annual report.
Social media company Snap is being sued by the parents of a girl who was raped when she was 12 years old by a man she met on disappearing messaging app Snapchat.
The 111-page lawsuit, filed this week in a Missouri Circuit Court, alleges that Santa Monica-based Snap “enabled and facilitated the grooming, exploitation, and sexual abuse” of the minor who is referred to as “J.F.”
The company failed to disable or warn users about “dangerous” features that predators use on the app to find and abuse their victims, according to the lawsuit.
Missouri resident Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, who was 25 years old at the time, raped the girl in September 2021 after she sneaked out of her house, the lawsuit alleges. The parents are also suing the attacker, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the girl and is serving 18 years in prison, according to the Social Media Victims Law Center.
The center and the Holland Law Firm announced Thursday they filed the lawsuit on behalf on the victim’s family.
“This assault did not happen in a vacuum — it happened because Snapchat’s product design made it easy for a predator to reach and manipulate an unsuspecting child,” said Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, in a statement. “Snap executives have long known that their features create a perfect environment for predators to exploit children, yet they have repeatedly failed to make the platform safe.”
A Snap spokesperson said in a statement the company cares “deeply about the safety and well-being of all Snapchatters.”
“Our teams have worked for years to build safeguards, launch safety tutorials, partner with experts, and work with law enforcement to help prevent the misuse of our platform,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The lawsuit is the latest legal hurdle facing Snap. Multiple parents who lost their children have previously sued the company, alleging that Snap failed to provide enough safeguards on the messaging app. Parents and child safety groups have voice concerns about how the app can be used to connect young people with drug dealers and child predators.
Other tech companies such as gaming platform Roblox, Google-owned YouTube and Facebook parent company Meta have also faced lawsuits over safety and mental health issues.
In March, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta-owned Instagram and YouTube were liable for the suffering of a California woman who alleged the platforms were built to addict young users. Snap settled that lawsuit before the trial started.
The latest lawsuit against Snap highlights safety concerns surrounding several features on the messaging app including “Quick Add,” which suggests users to connect with on Snapchat. Valentin-Rios used that feature to connect with the girl along with others to disguise his identity and groom her into sending explicit photos, the lawsuit said. The company’s “Snap Maps” feature allowed him to find the girl’s home address. And he used a cartoon avatar known as Bitmoji on Snapchat to conceal his age and present himself as a “a young, innocuous, and friendly looking boy.”
Families have faced challenges holding tech companies accountable for safety issues because a U.S. law shields platforms from being held liable for content posted by its users.
The lawsuit against Snap, though, says that it seeks to hold the company liable for the design and marketing of “unreasonably dangerous social media products.” It alleges that Snap co-created content such as Bitmojis abused by child predators and it designed the app to entice users to spend more time messaging others.
The lawsuit accused Snap of consistently turning a “blind eye” to underage users of its app. Snapchat requires users be at least 13 years old to sign up for an account, but J.F. started using the app when she was 11 years old. Snapchat was popular among her peers and friends so J.F. downloaded the app, which was presented as lighthearted and entertaining platform, without her parents’ knowledge or consent. The company failed to warn users about potential dangers, verify the ages of minors and lacks adequate parental controls, the lawsuit alleges.
Snapchat has a “family center” where parents can see their teen’s friends, view time spent and other insights about how their children are using the app. But the lawsuit said it isn’t enough because parents can’t restrict teens from sending private messages and children can create accounts without their parents’ knowledge.
The plaintiffs’ counsel also tested Snap’s “Quick Add” feature in 2023 and found that many of the usernames “generated by Snap’s recommendation algorithm appeared on their face to belong to predatory users,” the lawsuit said.
Valentin-Rios was also able to create a second Snapchat account with the username “Nocits21g” to connect with J.F. and to conceal the activity from his girlfriend, according to the lawsuit.
The rape victim, who was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression, started to engage in self-harm and expressed suicidal thoughts, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and financial damages for the harm allegedly caused by the company to the family.
“J.F. feels embarrassed and ashamed, but she is also angry that Snap facilitated this by design, and angrier still that Snap continues to operate its platform in the same manner today,” the lawsuit said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Thursday to crack down on inflated profits stemming from car crash lawsuits, blessing a hard-fought compromise between Uber and the state’s trial attorneys that averts a November showdown between two of California’s most powerful and moneyed lobbying forces.
The deal, the fruit of months of negotiations, takes aim at the lucrative way doctors can charge for procedures on patients referred to them by personal injury lawyers.
If a law firm has a client who was hurt in a car accident, the lawyer will often send them to a doctor who will perform surgery on a “lien” basis, meaning the doctor will be paid from money that comes from a lawsuit settlement rather than through insurance.
Uber contends this arrangement has created an incentive for doctors and attorneys to collude to dramatically inflate medical bills. The more expensive the bill, they say, the bigger the resulting payout.
The law, SB 623, caps how much these doctors can charge when their patient is involved in a lawsuit against a ride-share company, which are frequent targets of litigation due to their top-of-the-line insurance policies. The new law will also require Uber to ramp up background checks of its drivers.
“We’re going to have a much safer state both for medical patients and passengers in Ubers,” said Nicholas Rowley, a prominent Texas attorney who helped bankroll the fight and took a leading role in the negotiations.
The law only applies to cases that involve ride-share accidents that take place after Jan. 1, 2027.
“This legislation puts meaningful guardrails in place to better protect accident victims, increase transparency and accountability in the medical lien system and strengthen safety,” said Ramona Prieto, Uber’s head of public policy for the Western U.S., in a statement.
For months, Uber and lawyers from across the state poured tens of millions into dueling ballot measures that threatened to devastate the profits of whichever side lost.
Uber fired the first shot with a ballot measure that sought to cap how much attorneys can earn in lawsuits involving auto accidents. The company argued attorneys were swindling their own clients, inflating medical bills of car crash victims to increase the value of the settlement and then pocketing a hefty chunk of the payouts.
The state’s trial attorneys countered that the fee cap would make small or difficult cases a money-losing endeavor and block scores of accident victims from the courts. They shot back with their own ballot measure that would increase legal liability for ride-share companies if a passenger or driver is sexually assaulted while on a ride, seizing on investigative reporting that highlighted assaults in Ubers.
“They were waiting for us to blink and we didn’t,” said Douglas Saeltzer, the head of the Consumer Attorneys of California, the lawyer trade group that pushed for the measure against Uber. “Their starting place, I don’t believe, was in the interest of protecting victims — it was in the interest of protecting Uber.”
With the passage of Thursday’s law, both sides have agreed to pull their respective measures from the November ballot, halting campaigns that had both parties amassing tens of millions in funding and blanketing the airwaves with ads.
“Now we can stop seeing all the commercials,” said Assemblymember Blanca Pancheo (D-Downey) at a Tuesday hearing.
The law, put forward by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) and Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana), also caps the amount that can be earned by third-party investors who buy out a doctor’s lien in a personal injury case. These companies will purchase a doctor’s stake in the case at a reduced rate, then pocket a share of the payout if the case settles.
“Private equity and hedge funds buy them at a steep discount, then turn around and collect the full inflated amount,” Saeltzer said at a Tuesday hearing on the bill. “That’s money flowing to Wall Street investors, not patients.”
The law will require annual background checks for ride-share drivers and expand the list of offenses that disqualify someone from the job.
In addition to the ballot battle, has Uber sued two of LA’s most well-known personal injury firms — the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani and Downtown L.A. Law Group — accusing them of inflating medical bills and forcing clients to undergo needless and expensive surgeries to inflate the value of the claim. The firms asked the judge to dismiss the case Wednesday, arguing Uber had failed to prove fraud. Both firms have vehemently denied wrongdoing.
The lawsuit, filed last year, has put the plaintiff lawyers in the unusual position of playing defense. Listening in the audience at Wednesday’s hearings were the partners of Downtown L.A. Law Group and Jacob Emrani.
“Let’s be clear about what this Uber case really is,” said John Hueston, outside counsel for Emrani. “It’s brought by a $150 billion dollar company … to intimidate the plaintiff’s bar, exhaust its resources and chill the suits that hold Uber accountable.”
Michael Huston, one of the lawyers who represents Uber, countered that the case is “not an attack on the plaintiff’s bar.”
“We have brought suit against the two in this state … that are engaged in naked fraud,” he said.
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