Illegal Vehicle Modification Crackdown Simplified... Immediate Reporting via Safety Report App

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and the Korea Transportation Safety Authority announced on the 30th that starting from the 1st of next month, the Authority’s vehicle safety inspectors will immediately report any ‘illegal vehicles violating automobile safety standards’ detected to the Safety Report app.

This measure comes in response to trucks or general vehicles on the road arbitrarily modifying cargo beds, lighting devices, mufflers, etc., operating in so-called ‘illegal tuning’ conditions, making identification difficult, causing serious driving inconvenience, and threatening the safety of other vehicles and pedestrians. The Authority has been deploying vehicle safety inspectors to secure safety on the roads and intensively crack down on illegally modified vehicles. However, since violation details of detected vehicles were notified to related agencies such as local governments and police through official documents and administrative action requests, there were delays in processing.

Going forward, vehicle safety inspectors of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority will use the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s Safety Report app to immediately request administrative action from relevant agencies on-site upon detecting violating vehicles and will be able to check the results of administrative measures. Accordingly, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety has linked the automobile electronic information managed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport with the Safety Report system so that the detected violation details are automatically transmitted to the local government or the National Police Agency of the vehicle registration area indicated in the report, and a function to check the disposition results in real time has been established.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety explained, “From the 1st, when vehicle safety inspectors report detected vehicles through the Safety Report app, the work process will be greatly simplified, shortening the processing period from one month to one to two weeks, which is expected to reduce traffic accident risk factors caused by illegal vehicles accordingly.”

Meanwhile, vehicle safety inspectors are selected from among the Authority’s automobile experts and appointed by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. They perform duties to verify whether operating vehicles comply with automobile safety standards under the Automobile Management Act. As of 2020, they detected about 17,000 cases of safety standard violations and illegal tuning (modifications).

Kim Ki-young, Director of the Life Safety Policy Division at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, said, “By promptly correcting issues of vehicles violating safety standards through the Safety Report, we expect citizens to be able to drive and live comfortably in a safer road traffic environment.”

Kim Jeong-hee, Director of the Automobile Policy Division at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, urged, “Since the Ministry and the Authority continuously enforce crackdowns on illegally operated vehicles, such as tuning vehicle structures and devices not conforming to safety standards, owners of automobiles and two-wheelers should consult with automobile expert organizations like the Authority when necessary and perform legal tuning to help create a safe traffic environment.”

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