Newly-released information shows checks on engineers who inspect big trucks plunged at the same time as the number of large rigs on the road jumped.
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The agency cut its heavy vehicle compliance staff numbers in half in 2014. Figures released under the Official Information Act show that led to the number of audits it was doing on truck-certifying engineers - who both check and design things such as towing connections and brakes - plunging from 70 a year before 2014, to just 30 a year since then.
The discovery of a mass of poor certifications, and a spate of cracked or weak towing connections, has massively disrupted the industry this year.
NZTA denies any link between its cuts and higher crash rates, but they would, wouldn't they? Meanwhile, it seems pretty intuitive that failing to check the work of the people checking safety allows them to do a sloppier job, and that these may in turn have contributed to crashes. Unfortunately - and conveniently - police record-keeping is inadequate to show any link. But there's a reasonable case here that National's penny-pinching led to unsafe vehicles - and killed people on the roads.