Get out of the passenger seat to deny drunk driving? Why it’s all useless

National Police Agency releases related video on official YouTube

An incident occurred in which a driver who got into the passenger seat and made a false statement to hide the fact that he was driving drunk was caught by a security camera installed nearby.

On the 17th, the National Police Agency posted on its official YouTube channel, ‘You didn’t know if I got out of the passenger seat, right? I uploaded a video saying, ‘I watched it all.’ This depicts the situation in an alley in Seoul around 2 a.m. on the 29th of last month.

At that time, a car was driving through an alley, hitting other parked cars and motorcycles and passing by. A citizen who witnessed this reported it to the police, saying he suspected drunk driving. In the video, the drunk driving car attempted to flee the scene with its tattered bumper dropped due to the impact of the accident, but failed to escape due to the police’s quick response.

The driver, who was drunk, got out of the passenger seat and ran into a nearby building to deny driving. After being caught by the police, he claimed that he was not driving.

However, the police, who were suspicious because there was no driver in the vehicle, checked the video captured by a nearby crime prevention camera through the control center and found the driver getting out of the driver’s seat and moving to the passenger seat. Only after the lie was exposed did the driver admit to drunk driving. The driver’s blood alcohol level was found to be at a level that would result in his license being revoked, and he was eventually arrested for violating the Road Traffic Act.

The number of cases of drunk driving detected in 2023 was 130,150, which decreased due to the coronavirus (2020-2021) and then returned to the pre-COVID level (130,772 cases in 2019). In particular, the average annual drunk driving recidivism rate over the past five years (2019-2023) reached 43.6%. In 2023, the number of drunk driving traffic accidents was 13,042, resulting in 159 deaths and 20,628 injuries. This is a decrease of approximately 24% compared to 17,747 cases in 2020. Although drunk driving is steadily decreasing, the frequency is still high, with an average of 36 drunk driving traffic accidents occurring per day.

<ⓒ투자가를 위한 경제콘텐츠 플랫폼, 아시아경제(www.asiae.co.kr) 무단전재 배포금지>