Society: More Than Half of 'Sudden Acceleration' Reports Came from Drivers Under 50

 

Society: More Than Half of 'Sudden Acceleration' Reports Came from Drivers Under 50 

10 July, 2024

A major traffic accident at the intersection of Seoul City Hall Station in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

While sometimes racism in Korea gets brushed off as a misunderstood form of xenophobia, the real elephant in the room is age discrimination. Take, for instance, the Seoul City Hall traffic accident. The driver, an elderly man who had been at the wheel for over 40 years, claimed he was in a hurry. Yet, the response wasn't sympathy but a surge of support for banning older people from driving. Only in South Korea could such blatant ageism be so casually discussed and widely accepted.

This Korean brand of age discrimination flies under the radar, unnoticed by the rest of the world. K-pop fans and tourists, who are predominantly young, remain blissfully unaware of this societal flaw because they don’t experience it firsthand. They come for the music and the culture, never realizing the grim reality older Koreans face daily. Ageism in Korea is an insidious problem, deeply ingrained and largely ignored by those who don't have to deal with it.

Apparently, the tech-savvy young guns aren't as perfect as they think. Over the past decade, more than half of the 'suspected sudden acceleration' accidents reported to government agencies were from drivers under 50. That’s right, the same demographic that loves to sneer at older drivers for their supposed lack of skill.

According to data from the Korea Transportation Safety Authority (KTSA), obtained by Representative Ahn Tae-joon of the Democratic Party of Korea, there were a whopping 456 reports of "alleged sudden acceleration" to the agency's automobile recall center from 2014 to June of this year. Out of these, the ages of the complainants were confirmed in 396 cases.

Let’s break down these numbers: the 60-somethings led the pack with 122 cases (30.8%), closely followed by the 50-somethings with 108 cases (27.3%). Not far behind were the 40-somethings with 80 cases (20.2%).

The rest of the age brackets included 46 cases (11.6%) from the 70s, 30 cases (7.6%) from the 30s, 7 cases (1.8%) from the 20s, and even 3 cases (0.8%) from the 80s.

So, contrary to the popular narrative that only the elderly mess up due to vehicle defects, it's clear that people under 50 are far from innocent. In fact, they make up a significant chunk of these reports. And yet, incidents like the reverse running accident at City Hall Station have everyone thinking it’s just the older folks causing trouble.

Kim Pil-soo, a professor at Daelim University's School of Future Automotive Engineering and chairman of the Automotive Sudden Jerking Research Society, pointed out that sudden acceleration accidents happen across all age groups. The City Hall Station incident has been conveniently used to stigmatize elderly drivers, but the reality is quite different.

Instead of ageism, maybe we should focus on real solutions. Professor Kim suggests rolling out more preventive technology, like emergency automatic braking systems (AEBS) and pedal misoperation prevention devices, rather than just blaming older drivers.

There are also calls to make sure drivers are physically fit to be on the road, regardless of age. Kim Yerim, a lawyer at Shim & Mok Law Firm, emphasized the need for thorough health assessments for drivers and tighter controls on how licenses are obtained and maintained. Perhaps if we took these steps, we wouldn’t need to point fingers at any particular age group at all.