NHTSA Slashes Over A Quarter Of Its Staff

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Government cutbacks have hit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with over a quarter of the staff on the chopping block. This comes as the Trump administration works with Congress to slash what it characterizes as wasteful government spending.

Stellantis lost an estimated $2.7 billion for the first half of this year.

However, many are wonder if this move will negatively impact automotive safety, costing lives. It’s a reasonable question to ask and we assume is one the administration and Congress have looked into thoughtfully.

According to Reuters, it was provided with data prepared for Congress showing the plan to reduce the NHTSA payroll from 772 employees to 555. The same thing goes for other agencies inside the Department of Transportation, with the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration also losing over a quarter of their employees.

Overall, the Department of Transportation is trimming back a little over 4,100 employees.

When asked by reporters about the potential staffing cutbacks last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said to reporters, "If we have bloat in certain areas we'll reduce force.”

He reportedly said if it was necessary to hire some workers back later, that could happen. "We feel good where we're at right now, but we'll continue to assess where we're at with our staffing needs."

Whether you see this as a catastrophic loss or a huge victory probably depends more on your philosophy behind government spending. If you believe more money and people always leads to better results, then you’re going to view this move as a huge misstep with potentially fatal consequences.

But if you think many government workers are lazy and/or incompetent, then you probably believe little of importance will be affected by the cut. You might even believe NHTSA and other agencies will operate better than before.

Image via NHTSA

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