"100% Fatality Rate for Ordinary Riders"…Shocking Video of 200km/h Kickboard

Produced for overseas sales, not domestic
Personal mobility device accident cases increase every year

A video claiming to show an electric scooter traveling at "200 km/h" has gone viral online. On the 8th, multiple online communities posted articles and videos titled "200 km/h Scooter," which have been spreading rapidly. The shared video shows a man riding a scooter at high speed on a road without any safety gear except for a helmet. However, the road riding in the video is not an actual ride. The video is known to be a demonstration ride posted by a domestic company. The product is said to have been made for overseas sales purposes.

The scooter rider in the video is also a foreigner who enjoys electric scooter racing and is presumed to have ridden on a domestic road during a brief visit to Korea. Netizens who saw the video reacted with comments such as "It must be a population reduction project," "Motorcycles have a high fatality rate in accidents, but scooters like that will have a 1000% fatality rate," "Scooter to the afterlife," and "It must be a huge nuisance not only to the rider but also to others."

Meanwhile, the number of personal mobility device accidents, which lack safety equipment except for helmets, is increasing every year. According to the Road Traffic Authority's traffic accident analysis system, the number of personal mobility device accidents increased about fivefold from 447 cases in 2019 to 2,389 cases in 2023. The number of fatalities also tripled from 8 in 2019 to 24 in 2023.

A driving video of an electric kickboard claiming to have run at "200 km/h" has been posted online, attracting attention. [Photo by Online Community]

In response, the government has been conducting a pilot project since July to reduce the maximum speed of electric scooters from 25 km/h to 20 km/h until the end of this year. Intensive crackdowns on safety violations such as not wearing helmets are also being conducted simultaneously. The government plans to analyze the effects of the speed reduction after the pilot project ends in late December and actively consider legal amendments if necessary.

The problem is that despite government legal amendments, some modify electric scooters illegally or disable speed limiters. Electric scooters sold on the market come with speed limiters installed during manufacturing. However, some riders openly disable these limiters illegally or modify motors to bypass speed restrictions. In particular, methods to disable electric scooter speed limiters are shared on some communities and blogs. Furthermore, it is not difficult to find companies that perform tuning to disable speed limiters on electric scooters, raising concerns about the possibility of more serious accidents in the future.