Gyotong Anjeon

Last fall I posted a few entries on traffic and parking.
I've become a lot more accustomed to dealing with Korean drivers as a pedestrian. The first key insight was the realization that both drivers and pedestrians tolerate a much higher degree of proximity between motor vehicle and human body than they do in the US.

Before, I thought that a driver backing straight into me either didn't see me, or was planning to run me over. Now I realize that the driver HAS seen me; s/he is still backing up because the car is still more than a foot away from me. Similarly, a driver turning into the street as I'm crossing it isn't planning to hit me; s/he is planning to miss me by six inches.

The second realization is that there is no such thing as right of way. Whoever, driver or pedestrian, gets into the path of the other first gets to go.

Once I'd internalized these two rules, walking around in traffic got a lot easier. Instead of flinching or jumping or changing direction when I'm buzzed by a motorbike or car, I just keep going. Nobody gets confused, and nobody gets hit.

I still think this system is a lot more dangerous than the customs we have in the States -- the margin for error here is a lot smaller, and I imagine it must lead to more accidents.

One thing that is particularly dangerous is the scarcity of exclusive walkways for pedestrians. Cars often drive up onto and across sidewalks to reach parking spaces located between the sidewalk and the storefront. Cars also often park illegally on the side of narrow alleys, completely blocking sidewalks (if there are any) and reducing available street width to the point where a car and a pedestrian can't both fit side by side.

I've mentioned before that parking rules don't seem to be enforced at all. Here are a few more examples of that.

This is the sidewalk on the SNU campus heading up to the Language Education Building, a sliver of which is visible on the left side of the picture. I walk this route almost every weekday, coming from the main gate.

As you can see, there is no parking allowed on this side of the street, as indicated by the unbroken yellow line. Yet there is always a line of cars parked halfway up onto the sidewalk. Sometimes the line of cars extends all the way down the full length of the road. It's very frustrating as a pedestrian, because there isn't enough room on the sidewalk if people are walking in both directions at once. Yet despite the fact that there are dozens of campus employees regulating traffic within a few hundred yards of this spot, these cars are never ticketed or towed.

In the picture below, I've reached the LEI building, and am looking left down a narrow road running along the edge of the building. Parking is only allowed on one side of this narrow road -- the left side -- but that rule is completely ignored.


I think the no parking sign in the foreground has been placed there, on the corner, so that a small space will be left open for pedestrians to get up onto the sidewalk after crossing the street.

Here's a picture I took two blocks east of my building. The white car is parked on the sidewalk, completely blocking it. The black car is double-parked next to it, in a no-parking zone.

What's funny about this is that they are both parked directly across the street from the local police station.


Since I don't know where else in the blog to put this, I've thrown it in here. A few weeks ago I went out to get a 200-won cup of coffee (about 20 cents) from the vending machine in the lobby of our classroom building, and this is what it looked like:

Pretty cool, huh?