The police scrapped its “Safe Speed 50-30” policy, which restricted the vehicle speed in urban centers for the safety of pedestrians, and began field inspections to raise the speed limit. They withdrew a policy that significantly reduced the number of fatalities in areas where it was implemented after the presidential transition committee described the policy as “inefficient.”

According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun coverage on May 25, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Autonomous Police Commission formed a joint inspection team, and from May 23 until June 3, the team will inspect candidate streets for a higher speed limit. A total of 24 areas have been selected as candidates including ten city border areas, five zones around green spaces and streams, five tunnels, and four wide streets. The speed limit will be raised to 60km/h in the streets that are selected.

Safe Speed 50-30 was a policy that restricted the vehicle speed limit to 50km/h in urban main roads and to 30km/h in backstreets in residential areas. Currently, 31 of the 37 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have implemented this policy. The policy was first implemented in Europe in the 1970s and was introduced in South Korea in April 2021.

The effectiveness of the policy has been confirmed. According to an announcement by the National Policy Agency on August 12, 2021, for 100 days since April 17, 2021, when the policy was first introduced, pedestrian deaths in areas where Safe Speed 50-30 was implemented dropped 16.7% to 139 from the previous year (167).

If the police raise the speed limit, they are likely to increase the fatality rate of traffic accidents. According to a police analysis of the chances of motor vehicle fatality, when the speed limit was 50km/h, the fatality rate was 55%, but when the speed limit was 60km/h, the fatality rate jumped to 85%.

The police decision to raise the speed limit has triggered criticism that they are trying to “please” the new government. In a press release distributed on April 5, the presidential transition committee announced, “We will ease the 50-30 policy and raise the speed limit nationwide,” with the explanation that the committee reflected the public opinion that the policy was inefficient.

Park Moo-hyuk, a professor at the Road Traffic Authority said, “We went through a tough process to implement 50-30, but adjusting it so soon after its introduction doesn’t seem to agree with the global trend of protecting pedestrians,” and asked, “Wouldn’t it be right to observe the situation a little longer and work to improve the policy?”