Nowadays, serious accidents have occurred once a month. Two of four recent accidents caused serious casualties. The lack of the bus drivers’ welfare and bus safety acts are the causes of these accidents.
  Last July, an accident happened, leaving 4 dead and 14 injured at the Bong-pyong tunnel. The cause of the accident was drowsy driving. According to the defendant’s lawyer at the hearing on September 6th, the general practice of the bus industries is that drivers are only provided accommodations or meals when tourists offer them, and they are only provided meals when tourists offer them. Their basic salary level only follows the minimum wage law, and their only way to earn more money is to get bonuses by driving more buses. For these reasons, many bus drivers work overtime even if their body condition is bad. Statistic Korea’s report ‘Transportation Business of 2013’ says that the average working hours for bus drivers was 300 hours per month, yet their annual income was only 14,300,000 won, which means that they work long hours and get low pay.
  The Ulsan bus accident on October 13th was a predictable disaster. The driver had 12 previous convictions including drunk driving and unlicensed driving. The bus driver’s license test was changed in 2012. However, he had already passed the test before 2012, so he was exempted from the test. To make matters worse, there were no emergency exits on that bus. It is a rule that a 16-seater bus should have an emergency exit. However, since buses with tempered glasses are an exception to the rule, many bus companies just install 1 or 2 tempered-glass windows to save on expenses. The serious problem is that, even though they don’t obey these regulations, the government just imposes a light penalty on them.
  Many passengers keep complaining about the problems, and they feel afraid of getting on those buses. Song Chae-eun('14, Dept. of Chemistry) said, “I usually cannot find an emergency hammer. Even if I can find it, the hammer is taped so tight that people might not be able to use it. Therefore, I hope that bus drivers will inform passengers of the location of emergency hammers before the trip so that the passengers will be ready when they are in danger. I want all the bus companies to be fully aware of bus safety.”
  In addition, many experts point out the lax laws. Park Gang-woo, who is a professor of the CBNU law school, said, “For example, if the case conforms to 11 cases of gross negligence, they will get the same punishment as normal drivers get. However, if they have fraternal insurance like bus drivers do, it is impossible to punish them for other cases that don’t belong to the 11 cases of gross negligence. Since drowsy driving and rescue obligations don’t belong to the 11 cases of gross negligence, the two bus drivers who caused the recent accidents didn’t get punished.
  As the number of similar accidents has increased the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced, “We think it is necessary that the laws regarding the problems should be changed, so we have collected peopleʼs opinions on them since the beginning of last month. The new law will go into effect next year because we need time to fix and compensate the weak aspects of the law.”

By Kim Soo-min
  sm36@cbnu.ac.kr