When looking to improve road safety for children around the world, it is clear that the experience of South Korea has valuable lessons to offer.
To start, the numbers speak for themselves. In 1992, 1, 566 kids (14 years old and under) were killed in road crashes in South Korea. By 2014, children deaths dramatically decreased to only 53, the equivalent of an almost 97 percent reduction over that period of time. No other country that we know of has experienced such a remarkable reduction in only 22 years.
Although there isn't a single answer, the evidence shows that comprehensive policies played a crucial role in reducing children deaths due to road and traffic injuries.
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On the enforcement side, for example, transport safety acts, regulations and guidelines (explained below) were thoroughly revised and complemented when needed. A number of speeding and red-run cameras also were installed on road sides.
On the engineering side, transport facilities including infrastructure and safety controls (such as guardrails, new pavement and speed controls) were improved across thousands of hazardous locations.
These comprehensive efforts resulted in a 59.1 percent reduction of total road crash deaths affecting the general population: from 11, 460 deaths to 4, 762 over the same 22-year period. An almost 60 percent reduction of total road crash deaths already is a considerable achievement. However, this figure only partially explains the 96.6 percent reduction of children deaths due to road and traffic injuries.
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In fact, experts around the world wonder what policies and strategies played key roles in achieving these results. From our point of view, we think that a couple of initiatives — besides the comprehensive policies already mentioned — seem crucial in preventing road crashes affecting children.
The first one is School Zones, which are an effective preventive measure. A school zone is defined as an area within 300 meters from the main entrance of a school, and where road facilities are designed under specific school zone design guidelines. Moreover, traffic enforcement in school zones is also much stricter.
For example, vehicle speed in school zones is generally set at less than 30 km per hour, and drivers violating traffic regulations in school zones are punished much more severely than in other public areas: drivers can have their licenses suspended if caught driving a car over 40 km per hour in a school zone. As of 2012, there were more than 9, 000 school zones in Korea.
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Secondly, civic organizations also play an essential role. Among civic groups in Korea, for example, the Korea Green Mothers Society (KGMS) is the most influential. This non-profit volunteer service organization with some 530, 000 members nationwide — mostly parents of elementary school students — has played a crucial role in promoting and increasing road safety around school zones. Every day, members of KGMS conduct “guiding” activities along school routes to ensure children’s safe travel to and from school. KGMS also hosts a diversity of events like the Traffic Accident-Free Campaign for kids, actively publicizing the gravity of road crashes involving children as well as participating in various campaigns designed to promote road safety, establish more traffic order and prevent drunk driving.
The powerful symbolism involved in saving kids’ lives also seems to have a strong appeal with politicians and high-ranking officials. As a result, politicians are very cooperative in dealing with kids’ safety improvement issues, and can help implement local campaigns as well as deliver important messages to target audiences. This means that financial support and fund-raising activities are easier to implement, compared to other transport issues or challenges. And activities of civic groups like KGMS seem to benefit from the attention of politicians and high- ranking officials, and the latter can also score political gains (and votes) by supporting activities of groups like the Korea Green Mothers Society.
The World Bank is cooperating with the UN and other partners to achieve the objectives of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020, which aim to halve the number of deaths and injuries from traffic-related crashes. Worldwide, approximately 1.24 million people die on the roads every year and some 50 million are injured. These losses in lives and productivity can cost countries’ GDPs up to five percent.
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From our point of view, strategies for targeting traffic crashes affecting kids need to become a priority because these traffic crashes occur mainly at specific points or sites (school zones, playgrounds, parks, etc.) where prevention strategies can work effectively, particularly under the firm support of local politicians and community organizations, as well as high-level officials interested in promoting road safety for all.
We think this could be a concrete and realistic contribution to saving lives during the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, and beyond.
What do you think? In the countries where you work, is there room to implement an effective safety system approach that will help save more children’s lives? How safe are Korean roads? Did traffic improve and what is the current trend? The last post about road safety in Korea is from 2013 and thus, I want to answer these questions again by presenting statistics about traffic accidents in Korea. I’ll show the most current data and for some issues the development from 2000 until 2014.
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After the economic boom and urbanization begun around 1970, private motorization was very low. In 1980 then private motorization slowly begun but the big increase happened between 1990 and 2000. Cars become available and affordable while public transport was in a bad shape. The trend of private motorization is still on-going:
The number grew from 12 million in 2000 to over 20 million in 2014. Korea reached the 20 million mark of registered cars on 30 October 2014 (to be exactly at 11 am). Korea is the 15th nation in the world and the fourth nation in Asia (China, Japan and India) with more than 20 million cars. Korea experiences a constant grow of cars and the statistics don’t show a slowdown.
Luckily, the number of traffic accidents doesn’t follow the trend of private motorization. Traffic accidents have fallen by around 24% between 2002 and 2014:
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2007 was the year with the lowest amount of traffic accidents. After that the amount grew again but it seems to stabilize between 215, 000 and 230, 000.
After a drop from 426, 984 cases in 2000 to 348, 184 injuries in 2002, it grew again to 376, 503 in the following year. Then there was a constant decrease from 2004 to 2007. The number of traffic injuries then varies by year but it stays under the level of 2003. The year 2013 recorded a maximum low of less than 330, 000 injuries. However, in 2014 the number grew again. The development of injuries is similar to accidents: The amount of cases was in average lower between 2004 and 2008 then it is since 2010.
The number of fatalities in 2014 was half the amount of 2000. There have been 4, 762 fatalities on Korean roads in 2014, the lowest number of traffic fatalities since over a decade. The trend looks very positive. Even though it would be great if the amount of traffic fatalities would decrease faster, it is still a good development. Now, let’s compare motorization and vehicle-kilometers with road fatalities and injuries:
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The chart shows how these four indicators developed since 2000. Vehicle kilometers shows how much people use their vehicles. Here, we can see a similar development of motorization and vehicle kilometers. It means that people do not only buy cars, they also use them regularly. Fatalities due road accidents decreased more than injuries since 2000.
How can we explain the decrease of traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities? It may help to look at the accidents type and how many accidents they caused every year.
The Korean Police divides traffic accidents into seven categories. The plot above shows them and the amount of accidents for each category. Dangerous behavior is mainly accounted as a reason for accidents. Accidents due to insufficient safety distance increased from 15, 000 cases (2004) to 21, 000 (2005) and stayed on this level since then. The amount of accidents because a traffic participant ignored traffic signals increased by around 25%.
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Speeding doesn’t seem to be a problem with only 515 cases in Korea but that’s sadly a flaw in the regulations and missing enforcement. In Korean cities people are allowed to drive as fast as 60 km/h. The problem is that such a high driving speed drastically decreases the chances of a pedestrian to survive a collision. This infographic by Copenhagenize explains it well:
The urban driving speed is also the biggest driving speed. I discussed this issue already several times on and Korea is aware of that problem.
To support the previous argument about driving speed, I want to show you what group of traffic participants dies the most in Korea:
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1, 910 pedestrians died on Korean streets in 2014. Germany, for example, had 523 pedestrian fatalities despite 1.5 times the population size of Korea. In 2013 Korea had the highest pedestrian death rate among OECD countries. Pedestrians are the most vulnerable traffic participants in Korea. It’s a serious issue and speeding
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