SAFETY RISKS OF CAR-SHARING VEHICLES

[Anchor Lead]

Demand for car-sharing services is growing in recent days, since customers can borrow vehicles whenever they want regardless of the time and place. But the safety of shared vehicles came into question when a wheel came off of a shared car while it was on the road.

[Pkg]

A stretch of road in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi-do Province. A car wheel is left lying in a bush along the road. Park Byeong-rok, a Suwon resident was driving a vehicle from the car-sharing service SoCar on June 30th when a front wheel came off at this location.

[Soundbite] PARK BYEONG-ROK(SOCAR SERVICE USER) : "The wheel was knocked loose. The bolt had broken off."

He called the company on the day of the accident and had the car inspected as the steering wheel was shaking and making a lot of noise the day before. But the accident still couldn't be prevented.

[Soundbite] PARK BYEONG-ROK(SOCAR SERVICE USER) : "The wheel came off and we had to pull over to the side."

He called the SoCar customer center right after the wheel was dislodged, but the company replied that the incident could not be processed as an accident.

[Soundbite] PARK BYEONG-ROK(SOCAR SERVICE USER) : "They said it wasn't an accident because no third party was injured and no facility was damaged. They didn't even ask to check if I was injured."

The car sharing service apologized and said they're looking into what caused the accident. However, the company said dashboard camera images could help determine the exact cause of the accident, but there was no such data. SoCar, launched 8 years ago, is the nation's largest car-sharing service with more than 5-million members. Since this incident, the company vowed to conduct safety inspections on all of its vehicles and add 2,000 new cars.