Seoul Bus Drivers Take Life in Slow Lane : Job action: Nicknamed “street villains,” they back up their demand for higher wages by sticking to the letter of the law in the traffic-clogged streets.

Bus drivers in the South Korean capital are taking desperate measures to back up their demand for higher wages: They are obeying the highway code.

Long nicknamed “street villains” by nerve-jangled commuters, they have suddenly taken to following the letter of the law as they ply their trade through the traffic-clogged streets of Seoul.

Buses are stopping only at designated zones, their drivers give way to oncoming traffic at intersections and obey red lights, to the amazement of travelers accustomed to their cavalier treatment of the law and of passengers.

It is part of a novel campaign by the bus drivers’ union to press its claim for higher wages. It has pledged to work to the rules of the road, and thus fall well behind on timetables, until drivers get their increase.

But their new attitude to driving may outlive the go-slow campaign. Commuters, it seems, value their safety above the speed of reaching their destinations.

“We will continue to abide by the law even after our wages struggle is over,” said Lee Chang-kun, head of the Seoul bus drivers’ union planning division.

“We have had a great response from the public and the management should realize by now that driving illegally will not generate more revenue.”

The drive-to-rule is a welcome development for the city’s tourism officials, whose surveys of visitors from overseas highlight traffic chaos and rude taxi drivers as the worst aspects of visiting South Korea.

Last year the danger of using public transport was thrown into the spotlight when a bus crashed off an elevated section of highway in Seoul onto a highway below. Several passengers were injured.

It was the most alarming incident in the treasury of horror stories that every bus passenger can relate.

“I don’t care about how fast I get there; I care about getting there in one piece,” said a Seoul woman whose husband was injured last year in a bus accident.

“It takes me twice as long these days to get to work, but at least I feel safe.”

Bus schedules in Seoul were devised before the age of affluence, which has flooded 1.76 million vehicles onto city streets.

Public transport drivers have therefore been forced to flout traffic rules to keep to unrealistic timetables.

Stories abound of buses bypassing lines of waiting passengers to catch up to their schedules.

It is nothing unusual to see passengers scurrying across lanes of moving traffic to reach a bus that has stopped in the fast lane to save the time of pulling in to the curb.

Buses regularly fail to stop for red lights and pedestrian crossings, and small cars are jostled out of the way by the public service juggernauts.

Hordes of traffic police work at busy junctions during the rush hour, watching for the slightest traffic violation by private cars. But they turn a blind eye to monstrous breaches of the rules by bus drivers.

If public bus drivers like their new image of law-abiding road-users, what of the private bus companies, already unpopular with commuters after a hefty 16% increase in fares at the beginning of the year?

A change in timetables to accommodate law-abiding drivers would force them to increase bus frequencies and hit them with a financial burden they say they cannot afford.

“It would be nice if you could observe the law and at the same time run a bus company,” said an official at the Kaebong bus company, one of the city’s operators.

“But I’m not sure you could do that in the streets of Seoul.”