On April 17th, the Safety Speed 5030 policy has been implemented across the country. The test operation began in June 2017 and December 2018, respectively, in Yeongdo-gu, Busan; and the four major gates in Seoul. Moreover, the law, expanded throughout Busan in November 2019, will now be implemented nationwide.

According to the Enforcement about Rules of the Road Traffic Act, the existing speed regulation is 60km. However, according to The Pedestrian Collision Experiment conducted by the industrial complex in 2018, there was a 92.6% possibility of serious injury in a 60km/h collision, which means that it is very likely to kill pedestrians. Also, the possibility of a serious injury was verified to drop to 72.7% at 50 km/h and 15.4% at 30 km/h.

Therefore, the OECD and the World Health Organization have repeatedly recommended lowering the regulation speed.

The safety speed of 5030 is a policy about slowing down the speed of vehicles in the city that related agencies such as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; the Ministry of Public Administration, the National Police Agency, and the Korea Transportation Safety Authority, have been advocating since 2016. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, the National Police Agency investigated 68 sections nationwide, which enforced the safety speed of 5030. As a result, the total number of accidents in the 68 regions decreased by 13.3%, the total number of deaths decreased by 63.6%, and the fatality rate decreased by 58.3%. There were also voices of concern about traffic congestion; however, the results of the driving experiment showed that lowering the speed limit did not have a significant impact on traffic time. As a result of comparing before and after implementing the 5030 safety speed in Yeongdo-gu, Busan, the average of speed was only about 0.9%.

Jin Jang-won (Dept. of Transportation Policy, Korea National Univ. of Transportation) said, “In the meantime, drivers in our country have been accustomed to driving too fast on the city roads. Even if it's hard to adjust right now, driving slower in the city road is a general trend in OECD countries. I think lowing the speed will lead to safer driving. Furthermore, the precondition is to not just leave moral codes to the driver. Proper regulations and campaigns must be combined.”