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A revised law will take effect on Wednesday to force the operators of daycare centers, kindergartens and schools to install monitoring systems in their buses to check whether any children are left in the vehicles, the government said, Wednesday.
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| All school and kindergarten buses are required to install a system to check whether all children aboard get off, starting Wednesday following a revision of the relevant law. /Gettyimagesbank |
Under the new regulation, the buses must be equipped with a system that drivers must turn on after parking. The driver can turn the system on by pressing a button or tagging a card at the back of the bus, forcing them to check whether there are any children left behind.
If the driver fails to engage the system within three minutes of turning the engine off, an alarm will ring.
Drivers who do not follow the rule will face fines of up to 130,000 won ($115).
The measure follows several deaths and injuries of children left on buses.
Last July, a four-year-old girl was found dead inside a daycare center bus in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, seven hours after she was left alone in hot weather. No one in the daycare center noticed she was still on the bus.
About two years earlier, another four-year-old boy was found unconscious after being locked inside his daycare center bus for more than seven hours in the scorching heat. He still remains unconscious.
