Time now for our "Life & Info" segment… where we focus on information useful for your everyday life.
Unsurprisingly, lowering the speed limit in South Korea's urban areas by 10 kilometers an hour has been found to dramatically reduce the number of accidents.
And it also has very little impact on travel times.
Park Se-young has more.
In downtown Daegu, three taxis are headed to the same destination at different speeds - 70, 60 and 50 kilometers per hour.
The difference in time it took to drive the ten-kilometer route ranged from just 20 seconds to three minutes.
In fact, …the Korea Transportation Safety Authority last year found that lowering the speed limit of urban roads by ten kilometers per hour increases travel time by just four-point-eight percent,… or about two minutes.
More importantly, lowering the limit... considerably reduces the number of severe accidents.
According to a speed limit test carried out in two locations in Daegu from last July until March this year,… the number of serious accidents dropped by 56 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
Other countries have already taken the measure to improve traffic safety.
By lowering speed limits, Denmark saw a 24 percent reduction in the number of road deaths, …while Australia and Hungary reported a 12 percent and 18 percent decrease respectively.
"Pedestrians have an 85 percent chance of dying when hit by a car driving at 60 kilometers per hour. This probability drops by 30 percentage points to 55 percent for the speed of 50 kilometers per hour."
In 2018, speed limits were lowered in 160 sections in ten cities including Jeju, Jeonju and Cheonan.
Since April 17th this year, the speed limits of main roads in downtown Daegu have been lowered by ten kilometers per hour.
The Korean government is looking to continue its efforts to make streets safer,… by lowering the urban speed limit in more than 150 sections throughout the country in 2019.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.
