DANGEROUS FALLEN OBJECTS ON HIGHWAYS

[Anchor Lead]

Approximately 200,000 fallen objects, dubbed 'ticking time bombs on the road' are collected from highways every year, and accidents caused by them are not uncommon. However, it is not easy for most victims of fallen object accidents to receive compensation.

[Pkg]

A vehicle cruises on the highway. Suddenly a steel plate, which fell from a truck, appears out of nowhere. In another case, the tire and lower part of a passenger car was damaged because of a large stone on the road. Both car drivers paid several million won in repair costs due to the fallen objects but they could not get compensated. That's because there is no way to find out where the objects came from and when they dropped.

[Soundbite] Lee Jae-gyu(Victim of fallen object on expressway) : "The person responsible for the item must have surely known it fell off but just left it there."

A compensation claim can be filed with the Korea Expressway Corporation citing poor road management. However under current law, it's essentially impossible to receive compensation in case of accidents without casualties. From 2010 and until recently, 1,399 compensation lawsuits were lodged against the KEC by drivers who suffered damages from fallen objects. But plaintiffs won in just 12 cases where mismanagement could be proven in clear terms such as violation of the two hour-interval patrol rule. As such, a new law was proposed dubbed the "act on preventing accidents from fallen objects", aimed at placing more responsibility on the expressway corporation.

[Soundbite] Kim Byung-kee(Nat'l Assembly Transport Committee) : "Those who suffered damage had the burden of proving it. This bill calls on the relevant authority to prove they did their best in road maintenance."

Around 200-thousand objects are retrieved from nationwide expressways each year. Drivers are falling victim to these lethal objects on the road amid ambiguous regulations regarding compensation.