The effect of voluntary driver's licence surrender on road crashes caused by older drivers

As the older population grows, the number of road crashes caused by older drivers has consistently increased at an average of 3.7% per year over the past five years in South Korea. To address this issue, since 2019 the South Korean government has promoted a program of voluntary driver's license surrender (particularly among older drivers) that provides transport cards worth 100,000 to 200,000 Korean currency for voluntarily surrendering licenses.

This study aims to analyze the effect of voluntary driver's license surrender on road crashes caused by older drivers using the Comparison Group method. The number of crashes, the number of fatal crashes, and the number of serious injury crashes are compared before and after introduction of voluntary surrender program. The effects are examined in detail in terms of the ages of older drivers, the surrender rates, and the types of local areas like urban or rural areas.

The results indicate that voluntary driver's license surrender significantly reduced the number of fatal and serious injury crashes among older drivers. In particular, it was found that age group 75 and older showed the highest reduction of crashes in all age groups and that the cities and counties with the higher rate of driver's license surrender showed higher crash reductions. The reduction was also higher in rural areas compared to urban areas.