ational point of view and safety point of view.”
While driver behavior may be one of the main culprits in the country’s poor road safety record, experts also indentify deficiencies in planning and road maintenance, as well as other factors, as contributory causes.
“We have many blind intersections, especially in residential areas,” said Kho Seung-young, a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Seoul National University, adding that greater capital investment is needed to address road hazards.
“There is no control of intersections in residential areas. So there are many accidents between cars and pedestrians compared to other countries.”
Other safety problems arise from bureaucratic failures, according to another researcher in the field.
“Especially, the detail in installing traffic safety facilities is very bad in practice,” said Kim Won-chul, an associate research fellow at the Department of Regional and Urban Research of Chungnam Development Institute.
“This means that engineers do not obey the regulations of traffic safety facility installation. This is because the municipality and policy agency do not have administrative harmony.
“The incompatibility of these two bureaus comes from the fact that the budget is controlled by a municipality, and the management, including installation, is controlled by the policy agency. Eventually, the two bureaus blame each other for traffic safety problems.”
The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs is currently implementing its seventh action plan to improve road safety in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the National Police Agency. The plan aims to see road deaths reduced to 3,000 a year by 2016, bringing Korea in line with the OECD average.
“As Korea, is rapidly transforming into a car society, traffic safety and automobile safety have emerged as areas of attention. However, despite the commitment to continuous traffic and vehicle safety improvements, Korea lags behind in safe driving,” said a spokesperson at the Land Ministry, noting that everything from human behavior and weather conditions to fuel costs had an effect on the number of traffic accidents.
Whether through government efforts or not, the arc of recent years has been a decline in traffic deaths. Last year, however, looks to have bucked that positive trend.
While the official figures are yet to be released for 2012, Kho said that number would surpass that of the previous year, which would be the first rise in more than a decade. One possible reason, according to Kho, is changes made last year to the evaluation and promotion system for police officials.
“They evaluate the captains of police stations across the country. There are many items for the evaluation, but one item was removed last year: That is the number of fatal injuries,” said Kho, arguing that this may have acted as a disincentive to the police enforcing the traffic laws.
“Last year, the KNP did not pay much attention to enforcement, including speeding and many violations of traffic laws.”
Another theory for the rise in deaths is that international conferences such as the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit diverted police resources away from traffic enforcement.
With a lot done to improve road safety already, the next task for the country, as set by the government, is to bring the number of accidents in line with international levels. Kim said that three “Es” would be crucial to putting Korea on this path.
“We commonly say that we need three ‘Es’ ― education, engineering, and enforcement. Among them, I want to emphasize traffic safety education. With a long-term perspective, education can change the behavior of road users,” he said.
“Related to this, we have to develop safety policies for the elderly to prepare for an aging society.
“Engineering means to develop the design skills for roads, to improve the management of traffic safety facilities with converging advanced IT solutions, and to enhance technologies of vehicle equipment.
“Enforcement should be applied not to simply imp