Here are some statistic about Korean traffic safety that I have chronicled before that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone:

Overcrowded roads, jaywalkers and motorcyclists who use sidewalks as shortcuts make South Korea the most dangerous place to drive among 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to a report issued in late December. The data, gathered from 2003 statistics, showed 137 car accidents per 10,000 cars on the road. South Korea also ranked worst for number of vehicle accident deaths for the year; for every 100,000 people involved in vehicle accidents, 15 died.

South Korea has topped the list since joining the organization in 1996, according to Lee Ui-yong, chief of the Traffic Accident Analysis Division with the Road Traffic Safety Authority.

None of these stats should be surprising to anyone who has spent time on the roads here in Korea. In response to the continuous traffic safety problems the Korean authorities have plans to launch a traffic safety campaign:

In many countries, the horse-drawn carriage set the traffic culture foundation for the eventual transition to motor vehicles. South Korea, however, experienced the vehicle boom in a relatively short period of time as the economy developed after the Korean War, leaving its people without a real sense of what to do on the roads, Lee said.

Lee said unsafe drivers aren’t the only problem. A lack of guardrails, correct traffic signals and pedestrians who jaywalk or dart into traffic add to the danger.

He said South Korea is going to launch a safety campaign this year to lower accident and fatality rates and promote the importance of traffic laws.

If their safety campaign is just going to consist of policemen waving flags at intersections it will have no effect because cars just run the red lights anyway. If the police want to improve safety start writing tickets, especially for people parking illegally causing additional congestion in the already crowded streets. Than expand from there and write tickets for the mopeds driving on the sidewalks. I could go on and on with suggestions but if they just did these two things it would greatly improve the traffic problems here.

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