Koreans and their cars : Part 2

This post is a bit of an addendum to all the stuff that happened after my first cars post, various things I forgot and random bits of information that I didn't know where to put elsewhere.

First off, before I left, Jow asked me to photograph any drift cars I saw in Korea. I mentioned previously that foreign cars, let alone Japanese cars where quite few and far between in Korea. As such I only saw 1 Japanese car the entire time I was there and probably less than 10 makes of foreign cars total.

I did happen to see 1 rice car, which is displayed above. It seems to be a Hyundai Excel that someone has kitted up. New rear lights, skirting, spoiler, exhaust. Given that this was the most ostentatious car that I saw in my almost 3 weeks in Korea, I think its safe to say that the Koreans tend towards the simpler side of car aesthetics. Or maybe because I saw almost every sort of Mercedes styling 'borrowed' in the styling of Kia and Hyundai car makes, they just really like the look of the Merc.

Some other amusing experiences I had in Korean taxis were, the driver smoking a ciggie and talking on his phone while he drove.

In this picture here, you can sort of make out a taxi dashboard. The screens sitting in the center, the big one is the sat nav. The smaller one is the driver's mobile phone, upon which he was watching a Korean soap opera, whilst driving. He didn't crash so he must have watching TV and driving down to a fine art.

One thing I really liked about Korean roads were the fact that other than the major roads, every road in Korea was roughly like Bourke st mall in Melbourne. People walking here there and everywhere. You get the occasional car, but generally they are driving pretty slowly trying to avoid the pedestrians that are walking wherever they damn well please. This system seems to work pretty well and I never felt that I was in danger from being run down by a car. However, motorbikes don't seem to follow the car method and like pedestrians, go wherever they want, no matter how smaller the opening or how many people are walking in a street. I'm guessing there are a large number of minor accidents from motorbikes mowing down pedestrians in Korea because these guys, mostly delivery drivers, really seem to be focused on delivering their package in record time. I got almost run over a couple of times and tooted multiple times by motorbike riders.

I guess this is the downside of being able to get almost anything delivered to a residence in Korea at almost any time, night or day.

One more car thing, when we were staying in Seoul, the guesthouse we were staying at had a free dropoff service.  We took advantage of this to go to the museum.  On the way there, the car got pulled over by the cops with a number of other cars.  The driver spoke to a policeman for a fair while, handed over his license, more talking and eventually we drove off.  I asked Jiran what had happened and she said they were checking for seatbelts, which our driver hadn't been wearing at the time.  He was supposed to get a 30000 won (~$40) fine for not wearing the seatbelt, but had managed to talk himself down a 20000 won (~$30) fine for chaning lanes illegally.  I thought this was amusing that you could barter for the fine you were to recieve.