Rental Cars and Lease Vehicles: Fines for 'Rented Vehicles' Imposed More Quickly

Completion Within a Week Through Police Computerization
Reduction of Workload for Rental Companies and Police Officers

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] The procedure for imposing traffic violation fines on rental vehicles such as rental cars and leased cars, which used to take about a month, will be changed to be completed within a week. This is expected to reduce the burden on related industries.

According to the National Police Agency on the 27th, the police recently implemented the "Improvement Plan for the Fine Imposition Procedure on Rental Vehicles." Unlike general vehicles, rental vehicles owned by companies are subject to fines being notified to the company when unmanned enforcement or public reporting occurs. Until now, when companies received fine notifications from the police, they had to verify the enforcement date, identify the contracted driver, notify the police again, and then the police would change the fine recipient to the driver and send the notification, going through a complicated process.

However, with up to one million fines issued annually to rental vehicles, there were complaints about the heavy burden on rental companies having to manually verify drivers. Companies had to submit documents such as contracts proving that the driver who rented the car violated traffic laws to the police station by mail or in person. The number of cases where the fine was initially notified to the company but later changed to the driver as the fine recipient reached 1,000,709 in 2018 and 1,077,420 in 2019. It was also pointed out that it took about a month to change the notified fine to the actual driver, failing to control traffic violations by rental vehicles.

The police's solution was "computerization." When rental companies check the fine notification, they can directly input the lessee driver's information into "Traffic Civil Complaints 24." By simply attaching the contract documents as electronic files, the fine reassignment proceeds automatically. This ensures that the change of the fine recipient is completed within a week at the latest. Rental companies can reduce the workload of fine reassignment, and the police can also reduce the workload of their staff, creating a "win-win" situation. Additionally, promptly notifying the driver of the violation helps prevent further traffic violations. Currently, 10 major domestic rental and lease companies, including Lotte Rental, SK Rent-a-Car, Hyundai Capital, JB Woori Capital, and KB Capital, have adopted this system. A National Police Agency official said, "We plan to encourage more companies to use the fine reassignment system."