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Authorities knew for years that some trucks had a handbrake so sensitive it could be dislodged simply by shutting the cab door - in fact, since just after a man was crushed to death in 2010.
A truck driver closing his cab door was probably all it took to dislodge a dodgy handbrake, sending the vehicle down Ngauranga Gorge and fatally striking a road worker.
A truck driver closing his cab door was probably all it took to dislodge a dodgy handbrake, sending the vehicle down Ngauranga Gorge and fatally striking a road worker.
Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas In an Official Information Act (OIA) response, police say the Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) was not prepared to bring in a ban because it could "impact truck operators". The family of the roadworker killed in Ngauranga Gorge in March 2019, 25-year-old father-of-two Joji Bilo, accuse the agency of "carelessness and callousness". Police and NZTA already knew by 2013 of at least nine crashes in the lower South Island involving the Sanwa Seiki type of handbrake, including one fatal where a maths teacher was crushed on a hill in Dunedin in 2010. There was a non-inj...