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Consumer cautions are needed as the number of bike accidents is skyrocketing.
According to the Korea Consumer Agency (President: Kim, Young-Seen, www.kca.go.kr), number of bicycle-related injury cases filed to its Consumer Injury Surveillance System (CISS) stood at 239 cases, 367 cases (53.6% y-y), and 573 cases (56.1% y-y) in 2006, 2007, and 2008, respectively. In particular, number of injury accidents involving children aged 10 or below and teenagers took up over the half of total bike injuries.
The KCA recently conducted an on-line survey nationwide targeting 500 bike users. The survey showed some concerns for safety accident occurrence as most people (81.6%, 40 out of 49 persons), assemble their bicycle by themselves when purchasing assembly bike online (). Meanwhile, a large majority (447 persons, 89.4%) of bike users ride bicycles without wearing their protective gears.
Meanwhile, most frequent consumer complaints (1,218 cases for recent forty-four months) were found in area of product quality and after-purchase services (628 cases, 51.6%).
In this context, the KCA asks consumers’ cautions when using bicycles and also plans to make a suggestion to Ministry of Public Administration and Security for reinforcing regulations to make a bike road safer and cleaner and compelling bike users to wear protective gears. The Agency continued to make a recommendation to the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) that there should be labeling requiring assembly bike users to get their bicycles ‘safety check’.
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