Utilized for Determining the Cause of Accidents and More
To identify and analyze the causes of suspected sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) incidents, pedal black boxes will be pilot-installed in Seoul taxis.
The Korea Transportation Safety Authority (TS) announced on the 15th that pedal black boxes will be pilot-installed in 155 vehicles from 14 taxi companies within Seoul. This initiative aims to determine the causes of suspected SUA incidents, which became a social issue following the accident at City Hall Station in July, and to analyze pedal misapplication incidents.
Over the past approximately 10 years (2015 to last July), 346 reports claiming sudden unintended acceleration have been received at the Vehicle Recall Center; however, no incidents have been officially recognized as SUA to date.
The Authority explained that since pedal black boxes have been suggested as one of the measures to identify the causes of suspected SUA incidents, the pilot project was launched to verify the actual necessity of installing them.
The installation targets are taxi companies within Seoul with high accident rates. This project is linked with the Authority’s ongoing "Transportation Company Safety UP Performance Sharing Project" for this year. The installed pedal black boxes are capable of night recording and voice recording, capturing the driver’s pedal operation and overall vehicle operation conditions.
Through this pilot project, the Authority plans to analyze drivers’ pedal misapplication behavior patterns to develop accident prevention measures and support accident verification by providing immediate video footage when suspected SUA incidents occur.
Kwon Yong-bok, Director of the Authority, stated, "We will continuously cooperate with automobile manufacturers and related organizations to create a safe driving environment for the public by clearly identifying the causes of suspected sudden unintended acceleration incidents."
Meanwhile, the main cause of suspected SUA incidents has been revealed to be "pedal misapplication." According to the National Forensic Service’s investigation of suspected SUA incidents over the past five years, a total of 364 suspected SUA reports were received from 2020 to last June. Of these, excluding some cases where the vehicles were completely destroyed and analysis was impossible, all 321 analyzed incidents were caused by driver pedal misapplication.
In the case of the tragic reverse driving accident at Seoul City Hall Station in July, which resulted in nine deaths, the driver claimed the cause was sudden unintended acceleration; however, the National Forensic Service concluded that it was pedal misapplication, not SUA.
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