국민복지로서의 교통안전정책

Traffic Safety Policy as National Welfare

The basic cause behind the severe traffic problem that our country is faced with is that we regard transportation only as a means of economic development, not as a means of attaining national welfare. The social change of industrialization and urbanization has a distinctive trait of high mobility. In today's rapidly-moving society, traffic takes the most important part of people's live. Already, our country has established an era of cars that resulted in the increase of car accidents which has reached a serious level. If a radical countermeasure is not devised, our society might be filled with the fear of disability and death caused by traffic accidents, rather than economic prosperity. Now that the drop in environmental pollution caused by environmental quality reflects the national welfare standard, loss of life and health from traffic accidents should also be reflected in evaluating the national welfare level. When this becomes the case, then there will be an understanding that improvement of national welfare will be effectively attained by a safety policy which will decrease traffic accidents. The problem with our country's traffic safety policy is that traffic administration fails to catch up with the speed of social development. Road traffic administration must be equipped with a system that can pursue the second goal of traffic which is balancing traffic efficiency and safety. Also. traffic accident investigations and control functions should be specialized, and special measures should be sought to prevent traffic accidents of children which has nearly doubled the number of traffic accidents of children in the developed nations. These countermeasures request the national budget process to increase the investment on traffic safety. Our country should radically lower the occurrence of traffic accidents, and in order to advance to the level of developed nations, two elements should be settled beforehand. This that investment in traffic safety must be sharply increased and that consistent and long-term practice of traffic safety policy should be exercised. It should be clearly recognized that the objective of national development is not in development itself but in enhancing the national welfare, and the existing traffic policy should be revised accordingly. Welfare refers to "a condition where sound health, comfortable life and environment coexist that happiness may be enjoyed." Welfare is the ultimate essence of living culture sought by human beings, and therefore, a switch-over to a welfare-oriented policy is imminent. It should be recognized that amongst all the social problems we are faced with the investment effect will be biggest for our national welfare enhancement in decreasing the number of traffic accidents and traffic safety.