The number of pedestrians who died from traffic accidents reached 4.61 in every 100,000 people in 2007, according to the 2007 OECD statistics quoted by the Korea Transport Institute yesterday.
With the record, Korea far exceeded Hungary, which was ranked second in the list with 2.86. Greece and Portugal followed with 2.11 and 2.02 respectively. Japan turned out to be relatively safe with 1.9 in every 100,000.
Korea also other states in the number of pedestrian deaths per every 10,000 cars, with 1.36 - almost five times higher than Japan's record of 0.2.
Over three quarters of pedestrian deaths in Korea occurred in narrow side streets with a width of 13 meters or less.
. . .
While Korea struggles to rid itself of such an unenviable status, its police are increasingly adding to the overall traffic accident rate.
The number of traffic accidents caused by police vehicles has risen from 1,216 in 2006 to 1,352 in 2007 and to 1,733 last year, according to the data submitted by the National Police Agency to Rep. Shin Young-soo of the ruling Grand National Party.
The number of resulting casualties also rose from 500 in 2006 (two deaths) to 569 in 2007 and to 685 last year (two deaths).
Accidents caused by police vehicles as of the end of July reached 1,116 or 5.26 in average per day, leading to 311 injuries. If the trend continues for the rest of the year, there will have been an increase in police accidents, but resulting injuries will be down from last year.
South Korea was also tops when they put these figures out two years ago. In related news, South Korea was third among OECD nations in deaths of children in traffic accidents---Jeollanam-do was the first in Korea---and on that post I've compiled some other OECD rankings, since the local papers report just about every one. Actually, I know you won't click through, so I'll just quote myself from May:
Other data from the OECD has shown South Korea has the highest suicide rate, its people work the most number of hours (are at work the most I should say), has the highest rate of new TB infections, has a private sector that spends the most on public education, has the largest public school class sizes, is first in elderly poverty, ranks last in health spending, leads in motor vehicle accidents, and leads in accident rates among pedestrians. South Korea, according to the OECD Factbook 2009, is the least happy, and in a category that could go both ways, has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.
On the flip side, South Korea has the lowest obesity rate among OECD nations, the highest level of household internet penetration, is expected to recover the fastest from the current economic crisis, pays its public school teachers the second-highest salaries, has given us the greatest cultural inheritance of everything in the world, and ranks among the top in some academic areas that I don't have time to look into right now. In many of the articles and posts I linked to---sometimes on my own site to give context and revisit older news---you'll find other rankings vis-a-vis the OECD member nations. For example in the article about private sector spending on public education:Despite high education costs, Korea topped the OECD countries in population that has attained at least upper secondary education among those 25-34 age range. However, the percentage of parents who were satisfied with education quality was lower than the OECD average.
The report also found that Korea had a high ratio of students to teaching staff in higher education institutions. Korea ranked third in annual tuition for state-run universities at $3,883 following the United States' $5,027 and Japan's $3,920. In the case of private universities, the U.S. topped with $18,604. Turkey came next with $14,430 followed by Australia with $7,452 and Korea with $7,406.
However, Korean professors were paid more than the OECD average salary and their working hours were shorter than those of faculties in other countries.
All of this points to one thing: even more than foreigners love to say Korea is "not developed" or "third world"---it is developed, dumb ass, and it's not third world---Koreans love to see how their country compares statistically with others.
I've harped on poor traffic safety awareness for a while now, and after South Korea learns from the swine flu outbreak how germs spread, perhaps they'll give attention to this next. During "Mad Bull Shit," the season of panic over the thread of Mad Cow Disease from imported American beef, I recall seeing students at rallies in Gwangju holding these signs:
"살고 싶다!" means "I want to live," and I remember a few times here I recommended they hold these signs at crosswalks and stop signs, and instead of worrying about the imagined threat of Mad Cow Disease they instead show concern over the yearly tradition of students dying on school field trips because of poor driving.
20 comments:
This country has the worst traffic policies. South Korea is better off banning private car ownership.
We could blame 2MB regime for over-promoting cars "to keep up with other countries auto culture".
I hope South Korea wouldn't end up like Japan in the 1990s.
I've said for many years that when it comes to cars, Korea is like a third world country, and I have been to a few of them to compare to.
The lack of adherence to road rules here is appalling.
According to these stats South Korea's per capita mortality rates for car occupant collisions with cars, pick-up trucks or vans are very low.
And these stats suggest that South Korea's mortality rates for car occupants injured in noncollision transport accidents are very low as well.
So while the pedestrian mortality rates are highest, the car accident mortality rates are comparatively much lower.
Anecdotes about schoolkids dying in field trip bus accidents can be emotionally stirring and cloud our judgments about how safe or unsafe things actually are. For a country of 50 million, a few field trip bus accidents resulting in deaths every year isn't that abnormal. It happens all the time in the US during every school year.
This isn't to diminish the danger to pedestrians in Korea, but to put things into perspective and inject some data and facts into discussions about car accident mortality in Korea.
Kevin those stats look a bit suspicious. Looks like they are only for one month, January 2004. In that month S.Korea reported 14 only traffic deaths but that is a pretty small sample size.
I think that there are a few things that could be done to help the driving situation here.
1: When a city developes or re-developes a piece of land, officials should try to make ample parking structures. Overestimating the amount of parking places needed and stictly regulating streetlevel parking should have to goal of creating corners with ample visibility. The penalty for parking on sidewalks or parking on both sides of a narrow street, thust creating half a lane on a two lane road should bear the penalty of selling the offending car owners children into slavery.
2. Intersections should have some kind of signage so people know what the hell to do. Stop signs are great for that.
3. Traffic safety courses for kids would be helpful. If those don't help, I think that some plastic surgeons are offering procedures to young kids that allow for more bidirectional neck mobility .
4. Sidewalks. And training instructions for sidewalks.
5. Market common areas for market days, so that sidewalks don't become massive clusterfucks.
One reason that the mortality rate for car occupant collisions is low may be because most roads and highways (in or near major cities) are so congested that it's tough to even go anywhere near the speed limit; so a lot of accidents involving 2 or more vehicles end up being fender benders.
http://jr.naver.com/kidsong/view.nhn?id=2&nid=577&page=1
hence a little sing a long for kids
Tim,
Statistics is a pretty sophisticated discipline. It may intuitively seem to be a small sample size, but it's well within the purview of standard statistics practice to extrapolate from a sample like that.
It's very unlikely that the ordering will change much if, say, a year or two is sampled. At most a country will move up or down a few places, and it's extremely unlikely that South Korea will not be one of the lowest ranked countries.
Brian,
I agree with you that Korea isn't a third world country. And I know that, statistically, it is a first world country.
But somewhere between law and order, sanitation, and courtesy and chaos, unchecked crime, and filth in the streets lies a little country called Korea.
That is why I like to call our adopted home "second world". Not by any fault of it's own or a lack of effort to change that reality.
Not a put down, just a more accurate description for people who've never been here (in my opinion at least).
"Over three quarters of pedestrian deaths in Korea occurred in narrow side streets with a width of 13 meters or less."
Excuse me? A narrow street... 13 metres wide. Have these people actually looked at a street that's 13 metres wide? The average car is surely no more than 2 metres wide, meaning in a street 13 metres wide, you could get 5 cars going across it with some room to spare. This sounds to me like it's just the bigger version of bumping into someone on the street when you're just walking along, when you could quite easily go round them.
If you're driving in a 13 metre wide street and you manage to hit the 50cm wide area that is a person, something's going very wrong - illegal parking, sending text messages while driving, sending text messages while walking, walking in the middle of the road, driving too fast, using motorcycles/scooters like an untrained monkey, speeding, ignoring traffic laws, like stopping at a red light etc etc.
Word verification: Pairly. As in, Korean roads are pairly dangerous for pedestrians.
But somewhere between law and order, sanitation, and courtesy and chaos, unchecked crime, and filth in the streets lies a little country called Korea.
I'm not sure why I find myself defending the place. I'm not Korean nor did I like the place very much.
By the standards you mention above, you would have to place huge swaths of the US in the 2nd and 3rd world categories. Most if not all major US cities would have to be considered 2nd & 3rd world. I don't necessarily have a problem with this. It seems pretty accurate.
As far as law & order and crime are concerned, Korea is much better off than the US.
Korea is probably worse off in general with respect to sanitation and street filth, though major US cities can be pretty filthy as well. Also in some ways Korea can be much cleaner than the US. I don't think I've ever been anywhere inside in the US that's as clean generally as indoor places in Korea.
For courtesy, the US has Korea beat, especially as far as dealing with foreigners is concerned. Though the Koreans, at least among themselves, seem to have maintain certain elements of courtesy and decency better than we do in the US.
Chaos seems much more subjective. Any dense foreign place populated by a different racial group is going to feel chaotic, at least initially. For me, after the initial sensory and cultural shock, the place seemed no more chaotic than a major US or Western city, and often much less so. Crowded and stuffy at times, but not really chaotic. For one thing, it didn't really have the element of danger that contributes to the sense of chaos in US and Western cities.
Also, I arrive at my judgments by comparison primarily with the US. But it's probably a good idea to compare with other advanced countries as well.
"On the flip side, South Korea has the lowest obesity rate among OECD nations."
Fat people can't dodge cars.
Jeffery Hodges
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Crime and filth in the streets? I wonder where you were/are. Where I live it is very clean and orderly. In my little part of Korea, the seniors get together to keep the streets clean. They even go so far to pull weeds. Korea is generally cleaner than most cities in the US. They don't call Philadelphia "Filthy-delphia" for nothing. Yes, there are some clean cities like Portland and Salt Lake City, but a vast majority (mostly in the East) are dirty holes.
As far as being second or third world, Korea is very developed. Today, I was looking out the window of my office in northern Gyeonggi-do and watched in the distance a brand new metro line that opened in July rolling by. Afterward I stepped into the next room which is a technologically advanced English center and remembered the days when I worked as a middle school teacher in the US and had to fight with the teachers for the few overhead projectors that were available. Third or second world? Not!
As for class size: Research has found that smaller class size has little bearing on outcomes. Maybe classroom size may be relevant in America where touchy-feely pedagogy reigns supreme, but with Korea's teacher-centered, teaching-to-the-test methodology, it works.(In fact, Koreans are kicking American, Australian and Canadian butts in standardized test scores.) This doesn't make it third world or even second world, it just makes it different. Let's refrain from projecting our values onto Korea.
The biggest reason why I object to first-, second-, and third-world labeling is because it's incorrect, and refers to Cold War designations, not rankings. South Korea can't be 2nd world because it's not a leading Communist country. Use the developed/developing labels if you have to, but I still consider Korea a developed country. Not that I'm an economist or that anybody's consulting my opinion.
For people who rag on Korea and hold up the United States as an example, look no further than New Orleans. It's a national embarrassment that the quote-unquote most powerful nation in the world can't get this city back together.
Or, if you want examples of chronic problems not brought on by single natural disasters, there are pockets of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Appalachia in general that are appauling. In even small towns and villages in Jeollanam-do you can find high-speed internet, PC rooms, wifi hotspots, and new schools . . . in places here there is no electricity, no running water, unpaved roads, and kids with no shoes. Instead of nation-building by invading other countries, why not put the hundreds of thousands of young men and women to work building our own country?
And that's all without getting into crime and filth. Granted Korea's not as safe as some would have you believe, but bottom line is I feel safe walking through any neighborhood of any major city, night or day. I can't say the same of any town or city large or small in the US. For all the talk about how dirty Korea is---it kills me when the students litter without thinking twice---I think it compares favorably to cities over here.
So, sure, there are places in which Korea could improve. But they don't make it less of a country.
Nomad, on your old blog there was a discussion about traffic accidents and fatalities in Korea, which also addressed how Japan — where people on average drive considerably better than in South Korea — also had a surprisingly high rate of accidents.
Is there any way to dig that up? I had referenced it several years ago, but since you closed up your blog, it's not accessible, not even through Wayback.
I miss your old blog. Lots of great stories and good discussion.
Filth and stuff all depends on where you are.
In my part of Honolulu, things are very neat (though the roads are so full of potholes that I ride my bicycle on the sidewalk wherever I can), but if I go a mile or so to the south or west, I'm in an area full of weedy sidewalks and strewn trash.
On the other hand, Orange County for the most part is as consistently clean and neat as the nicest parts of the Seoul area (which can be pretty nice), but the worst residential areas of Southern California are worse than the worst of their counterparts in the Seoul area.
Ryan wrote:
I've said for many years that when it comes to cars, Korea is like a third world country, and I have been to a few of them to compare to.
The lack of adherence to road rules here is appalling.
Having driven in both, I'd say that driving in South Korea is comparable to (but slightly better than) the third-world country of Italy, especially the underdeveloped backwater of Lazio. Maybe it has something to do with being on a peninsula.
Look no further than checking out several Japanese prefectures west of Honshu of Japan. They are as bad as some South Korea's road and both of them could improve.
Kushibo,
When I shut down the blog, I deleted everything...maybe you can find the post you're looking for here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://lostnomad.org
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