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A BMW 520d burst into flames while the owner was driving along Misa Boulevard in Hanam

The South Korean government has taken the step of ordering vehicles that fall under the BMW recall but have not received a safety checkup to stay off the road. The government is planning to take stern measures against the owners of vehicles who continue driving in defiance of this order by pressing charges against them if their car catches on fire or gets into some other accident.

“The basic duty of the government is protecting public safety. In accordance with Article 37 of the Motor Vehicle Management Act, we’re ordering vehicles that fall under the BMW recall but have not received an emergency safety checkup to get a checkup and are asking the mayors of cities, counties and districts to order those cars to suspend operations,” Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mee said in a statement to the public that was announced at the main government office in Seoul on Aug. 14.

This is the first time the government has asked local governments to order vehicles that are part of a recall to stay off the road. The authority for ordering the suspension of vehicular operations rests with the heads of local government bodies around the government, which will initiate the administrative procedures on Aug. 15.

Initially, the central government had been reluctant to make it mandatory for vehicles to cease operations. But it eventually resorted to compulsory measures, after a series of fires after the recall was announced inflamed public anxiety and after tens of thousands of vehicle owners failed to get the checkup by the deadline of Aug. 14.

Gyeonggi Province. Firefighters dispatched to the scene extinguished the flames within 10 minutes. (provided by Hanam Fire Station)

Though a total of 106,000 vehicles were subject to the recall, just 79,000 of them had received the checkup by Aug. 13. The Transport Ministry estimated that the order to stay off the road will apply to between 10,000 and 20,000 vehicles that failed to receive a checkup by Aug. 14.

After receiving information from the Transport Ministry about the vehicles that have not been checked, each local government body will identify the vehicle owners and send them a letter on Aug. 15 ordering them to get a checkup and stay off the road until they do. The order to stay off the road will take effect on Aug. 16, the day that the letters arrive, the Transport Ministry said. Vehicles owners will not be allowed to drive their vehicles except for the purpose of getting a checkup and will be exempted from the ban as soon as they get a checkup.

Information about vehicles that are banned from driving is linked to the National Police Agency’s vehicle registry system, which makes it possible for police cruisers to identity offending vehicles simply by running their license plate numbers. The current Motor Vehicle Management Act states that an individual convicted of driving a vehicle in violation of a suspension order can be sentenced to up to one year in prison or a fine of no more than 10 million won (US$8,819).

“If there’s a fire or some other accident while a vehicle is driving in defiance of the suspension order, we’ll take aggressive action to press charges against them,” said Kim Gyeong-uk, chief of the Transport Ministry’s transportation and logistics office.

Vehicle owners have expressed their discontent about these measures.

“The government is threatening to aggressively press charges if a fire breaks out while someone is driving their car in defiance of the government measures. But they ought to be prosecuting the manufacturer instead of passing the buck to car owners,” one owner said.

Car owners and consumer groups are also filing complaints, both civil and criminal, against BMW for its tardy recall and in connection with allegations that it tried to cover up the defects.

After BMW car owners asked prosecutors to investigate this matter last week, a group called Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty asked the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office to file criminal charges against the BMW headquarters and BMW Korea, along with their executives, on charges of committing fraud and violating the Motor Vehicle Management Act.

“If our customers request a rental car, we’ll provide every service to make that happen,” BMW Korea announced on Tuesday. The company is loaning replacement vehicles, including rental cars, free of charge to car owners whose cars are determined by a checkup to be unsuitable for driving. The Transport Ministry believes that BMW Korea is fully capable of meeting this need, since the checkups show that between 8 and 9 percent of vehicles aren’t roadworthy. BMW Korea is planning to initiate the recall on Aug. 20.

The Transport Ministry is also planning to carry out its investigation into the cause of the fires as quickly as possible so that this investigation, which would normally take about 10 months, can be completed by the end of the year. BMW has attributed the fires to a defect in the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) module, which is attached to the engine, but multiple fires in vehicles not subject to the recall have raised doubts about the fires’ exact cause.

On Monday afternoon, a BMW M3 gasoline-fueled convertible – a model that’s not part of the recall – was cruising along the Yangyang Expressway in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, when it burst into flames. Nine out of 38 BMW vehicles that have combusted this year have not been subject to the recall.

By Heo Seung and Hong Dae-seon, staff reporters

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