The auto industry is opposed to changing the law, saying it could lead to more unnecessary disputes.
However, apart from changing the law, there are also many voices calling for a change in the way vehicles store accident records to help prevent and find the cause of sudden suspicious accidents.
Reporter Lee Seul-ki reports.
[Report]
When you open the bonnet of an accident vehicle, you will find the ECU, the electronic control unit, which is the brain of the car.
This is where the accident data is ultimately stored in an ‘event recorder’ called an EDR.
There are 15 items, including the speed of the car, the engine’s RPM, and any changes in the accelerator pedal.
However, domestic vehicles are subject to unexplained high-speed driving for tens of seconds, and even if an accident occurs, only the last five seconds are stored.
[Dae-Kwon Yoon / Head of Traffic Accident Engineering Research Institute : “Since the data is only available for about 5 seconds before the collision, there are limitations in analyzing and interpreting the overall accident.”]
On the other hand, vehicles from companies like Ford in the US store the last accident record for up to 25 seconds.
The U.S. has issued a legislative notice of intent to amend an executive order to increase the “accident record storage time” for all vehicles in the country to at least 20 seconds.
[Park Yo-han/Samsung Traffic Safety and Culture Research Institute: “We need to analyze how and for what reason the car was tampered with for a long period of time, such as 20 seconds, and whether the car malfunctioned or turned off before that.”]
Domestic automakers claim that they have set standards스포츠토토, and that there are overseas companies that store only 5 seconds.
However, even within the same 5 seconds, the records of overseas companies are much more closely spaced, so the information is evaluated as having less error and more ‘completeness’.
While Hyundai Kia records every 0.5 seconds, many overseas companies store information every 0.1 to 0.2 seconds.
Foreign companies are increasing not only the time, but also what and how much they automatically save.
Tesla and Toyota have installed additional devices in addition to their existing EDRs to store driving and accident records and provide them to drivers when needed.
[Youngseok Choi/Adjunct Professor, Department of Future Mobility Engineering, Halla University : “(Korean companies) used to see disclosing something as a risk, but now they’ve changed that and are saying that the more they disclose, the more customers can trust them and ride in cars made by their own manufacturers…”]
We’re also seeing the introduction of “accelerator restraints” that automatically slow the car down when they detect abnormal rapid acceleration.
Japanese automakers have already introduced this device and are even discussing an international standard, but the concept is unfamiliar in Korea.
KBS News Lee Seul-ki.