Reinvesting traffic fines could yield W6.6tr in safety benefits, study finds

Reinvesting traffic fines and penalties into road safety programs could generate 6.6 trillion won in accident-reduction benefits over five years at a cost of 3.2 trillion won ($2.31 billion), according to a new analysis. The finding underpins a proposal to create a temporary special road traffic safety account funded by the roughly 1.4 trillion won collected annually in fines — revenue that currently does little to reduce accidents.

Woo Seung-guk, head of the road traffic research division at the Korea Transport Institute, presented the findings Monday at a legislative forum co-hosted by the National Assembly Traffic Safety Forum — co-chaired by lawmakers Seong Il-jong and Yoo Dong-su — and the General Insurance Association of Korea at the National Assembly Library.

The special account Woo proposed would operate for five years from 2026 to 2030, with the option to extend if results prove effective. It would be funded by 70 percent of all traffic fines and penalties and administered jointly by the Ministry of Interior and Safety and the Korean National Police Agency. In 2024, automated enforcement fines totaled 1.36 trillion won and penalty surcharges 76.7 billion won — roughly 1.4 trillion won in all. The institute estimated that 1 trillion won per year is needed for traffic safety spending and set the 70 percent figure accordingly.

The proposed spending plan allocates 2.13 trillion won to provide annual grants of 600,000 won to elderly drivers who voluntarily surrender their licenses (up to age 90); 517.5 billion won to subsidize pedal misapplication prevention devices for drivers aged 60 and older; 680 billion won to designate and upgrade new senior protection zones; 80 billion won to expand village resident protection corridors; 55.7 billion won to improve road marking visibility; and 360 billion won for elderly driver education and pilot programs for drunk-driving prevention devices — totaling 3.82 trillion won. Weighing only the five-year benefits and costs, the analysis found total benefits of 6.6 trillion won against total costs of 3.16 trillion won, for a benefit-cost ratio of 2.09. Among individual measures, pedal misapplication prevention devices (4.30) and the expansion of senior protection zones (3.51) showed the highest returns.

The institute cited the broken link between fines and road safety as the core justification for the special account. Over the five years from 2019 to 2024, the correlation coefficient between regional fine revenue and accident counts was just 0.026 — in effect, no relationship at all. By contrast, panel data covering 228 cities, counties and districts nationwide from 2016 to 2024 confirmed a statistically significant relationship between higher traffic safety budgets and lower casualty counts. For a city of 300,000 people, an investment of 6 billion won was estimated to reduce deaths by one per 100,000 residents.

Im Dong-uk, director of the traffic safety division at the Korea Transportation Safety Authority, presented pilot results for advanced safety devices. In a three-month trial last year involving 227 corporate taxi drivers, pedal misapplication prevention devices blocked 3,628 instances of abnormal sudden acceleration, and the frequency of misapplication events per 100 kilometers fell 53.4 percent, from 0.204 to 0.095. Deployment of the devices grew from 60 units in 2024 to more than 4,157 this year, with a cumulative total of 5,065 as of Sept. 1.

AI-based video safety monitoring systems also showed results. Fitted to 500 buses across 13 route operators in 2024, the devices cut accidents 29.2 percent year-on-year — from 298 to 211 — while serious injuries fell 49.3 percent and signal violations dropped 87.6 percent.

Im said that while pedal misapplication prevention devices were mandated in July for passenger cars (from 2029) and vans, trucks and special-purpose vehicles under 3.5 tons (from 2030), no legal basis exists to subsidize the devices for vehicles already on the road. With no dedicated central government account and no individual-support legislation in place, 12 local governments — including those in Daejeon, Busan, Ulsan and Gyeonggi Province — have been responding through local ordinances, he said.

"Safety spending is not a cost that disappears once it hits the road — it is an investment that saves precious human lives," Woo said. "We must use the special account to concentrate resources on vulnerable road users and underserved areas, and close the safety gap."

Meanwhile, traffic fines and penalties are currently split so that 20 percent goes to the emergency medical fund and the remaining 80 percent flows into general revenue, with no direct link to road safety programs. A special account for automotive traffic management improvement, once funded by penalty revenue, was abolished in 2007 and folded into the general budget. Bills to redirect the funds to road safety were introduced multiple times in the 20th and 21st National Assemblies but failed to pass.