Scary Kids These Days... Reckless Racing Without a License

Middle School Student Drives Without License from Yongin to Seoul
Crashes Father's Car

Minor Drives from Daegu to Seoul
Hits Building and Is Caught by Police

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] Incidents of unlicensed driving among teenagers are occurring one after another. The methods vary, including secretly driving parents' cars or renting cars, and there have even been cases of driving from Daegu to Seoul.

According to the police on the 10th, middle school student A was caught by the police on the 5th after causing an accident by hitting parked vehicles while driving his father's car.

On the 5th, around 2 a.m., A drove his father's car from Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, heading to Seoul, and around 6 a.m., he collided with four parked cars and a motorcycle near Dongho Bridge in Seoul. At the time, A was accompanied by four friends and was found not to have consumed alcohol.

In November of last year, a 13-year-old minor was caught by the police after driving unlicensed from Daegu to Seoul and crashing into a building on a street in Seongdong-gu, Seoul.

Also, in the same month in Gwangju, the police arrested four teenagers following a kidnapping report, which turned out to be a false alarm, but the unlicensed driving was uncovered. They were found to have rented vehicles from a car-sharing company and were driving without licenses.

Cases of teenagers driving without licenses occur steadily every year. According to data submitted by the Road Traffic Authority to Park Jae-ho, a member of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, there were a total of 3,301 unlicensed traffic accidents involving teenagers from 2015 to 2019, resulting in 91 deaths and 4,849 injuries. The number of accidents by year was 724 in 2015, 513 in 2016, 764 in 2017, 616 in 2018, and 684 in 2019.

During the same period, there were a total of 405 unlicensed rental car traffic accidents involving teenagers, resulting in 8 deaths and 722 injuries.