Crash costs could fall by W3.3b if 1 in 10 elderly drivers give up licenses: study

Voluntary license surrender by older drivers could reduce traffic crashes, lower crash-related costs and curb greenhouse gas emissions, a study using data from Daejeon suggests.

The findings come as crashes caused by drivers aged 65 or older are rising in South Korea, even as the overall number of crashes declines.

If 1 in 10 license holders aged 65 or older in Daejeon voluntarily gave up their licenses, the city could see about 137 fewer traffic crashes a year, saving about 3.3 billion won ($2.4 million) in crash-related costs, the researchers estimated.

Annual greenhouse gas emissions could also fall by about 9,700 metric tons.

Nationwide, 2.51 percent of license holders aged 65 or older surrendered their licenses in 2025, according to police data obtained by Rep. Bok Ki-wang of the Democratic Party of Korea. The rate has remained in the 2 percent range since 2021.

The study, published in Regional Policy Research, was conducted by researchers from the Daejeon Research Institute and the Daejeon city government.

They based their estimates on city statistics, including the 169,854 people aged 65 or older who held driver's licenses in Daejeon in 2023.

They also drew on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's guidelines for assessing the benefits of transport investments.

The study estimated that annual greenhouse gas emissions could fall by about 19,400 metric tons if 20 percent of older license holders in the city surrendered their licenses, and by about 29,000 metric tons if 30 percent did so.

Korea recorded 193,889 traffic crashes in 2025, down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, according to figures released in April by the Korean National Police Agency and the Korea Road Traffic Authority. Crashes caused by drivers aged 65 or older rose 8.3 percent to 45,873.

Deaths in those crashes rose 10.8 percent to 843, while overall traffic deaths increased 1.1 percent to 2,549.

The number of license holders aged 65 or older rose 8.9 percent to 5.63 million in 2025. Government figures put the country's population aged 65 or older at 11.13 million in 2026, or 21.6 percent of the total.

The researchers also surveyed 198 drivers aged 60 or older in Daejeon. Asked at what age someone should be considered an older driver, 44 percent chose 75 to 79, the most common response.

The share of respondents who reported physical difficulty while driving rose gradually across age groups from age 60, then climbed sharply from age 75.

"(The results) suggest a gap between the age at which older drivers consider someone an older driver and when their physical abilities actually begin to decline," the researchers wrote.