SCB

A surprising recent discovery is that, from my personal observations, as much as 50% of Koreans are afflicted with SCB, Situational Color Blindness. It seems that people are afflicted the moment they get behind a steering wheel. The symptoms are most visible when they approach red stoplights. At some stoplights in rural areas nearly half the drivers will go through a red light. City dwellers do not seem to be affected by this.

I guess the biggest cause of this affliction is the stupid stop lights. There are no sensors in most areas. One light on my way to work stops me everyday. In 10 months I have only seen 4 cars cross. 3 minutes everyday sitting at a stop light. It makes perfect sense to run the light, except for the day when I was driving with a colleague and the woman behind us decided to run the light. She did not even see us! My colleague realized that she was going to hit us at 40 miles per hour. He gasped and quickly pulled into the middle of the intersection so we did not get hit. I guess it is no surprise that Korean roads are the most dangerous for drivers and pedestrians in the OECD.