[2026 Parliamentary Audit] Vans with Too Few Passengers Brazenly Speed in Bus Lanes... Enforcement Blind Spot Amid Police-Expressway Corp. Disconnect

People Power Party Rep. Kim Jongyang raises concerns at Land Committee audit of Korea Expressway Corporation

Concerns have been raised that it is difficult to identify vehicles improperly using expressway bus-only lanes during holiday periods and rush hour. There is no dedicated enforcement equipment that can automatically check how many people are actually in a moving vehicle, and statistics on violations of passenger-number requirements are not maintained separately.

Rep. Kim Jongyang of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee. Office of Rep. Kim Jongyang

Rep. Kim Jongyang of the People Power Party said on Thursday, October 8, during a parliamentary audit of the Korea Expressway Corporation held by the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, "For vans with nine or more seats to use bus-only lanes, they must meet a minimum passenger requirement. But there is no dedicated enforcement equipment that can automatically check how many people are actually on board while the vehicle is moving."

According to Rep. Kim, there were 246,890 recorded violations of expressway bus-only lane rules over the past five years. That amounts to about 50,000 a year, or an average of about 135 a day. Yet even separate statistics on how many vehicles violated the passenger-number requirement are not being maintained.

Rep. Kim cited the lack of coordination between the police and the Korea Expressway Corporation as a cause of this enforcement blind spot. "The police have the authority to enforce the rules and impose fines, but the Korea Expressway Corporation also patrols expressways every day," he said. "The police have the enforcement authority, and the Korea Expressway Corporation is at the scene. If the two agencies are not connected, law-abiding citizens are the only ones who lose out in the gap."

"The Korea Expressway Corporation should work with the National Police Agency to establish an on-site reporting system for vehicles suspected of violating passenger-number requirements and consider introducing new enforcement-support technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) video analysis," he said.

Also under scrutiny was the slow response at secondary accident scenes, where vehicles and people stopped after an initial crash are struck again by vehicles behind them. Secondary accidents occur after an average of 5 minutes and 54 seconds, while Korea Expressway Corporation patrol vehicles take an average of 15 minutes and 1 second to arrive at the scene. At 140 secondary accident scenes involving fatalities, tow trucks took an average of 17 minutes and 24 seconds to arrive, according to the data.

"If accidents occur within an average of six minutes, but patrol vehicles take 15 minutes and tow trucks 17 minutes to arrive, what are citizens supposed to trust while they wait?" Rep. Kim said. "Rather than simply telling people to get out of harm's way quickly, the first priority should be to reduce the Korea Expressway Corporation's response time."

He added, "To prevent a simple vehicle breakdown from leading to a fatal secondary accident, the time from a report to arrival at the scene should be treated as a key safety indicator and strictly monitored."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.