Korea Expressway Corp. (KEC) has set up the Safety Control Tower Committee to exclusively take charge of measures for quick responses to accidents on highways around the country and reduce the number of accidents at the same time.

The highway corporation said the special unit to take charge of highway safety has been set up in the company’s reorganization as of Jan. 1 in the wake of the government’s keen attention for the safety of public transportation. The government was awaken to safety at sea and land with after the sinking of the Sewol ferry in March, which set off alarm bells across the nation and calls for stricter safety measures at public transportation facilities. The government set up the National Safety Agency to take control of transportation safety on a national level.

The new safety control tower will take control of the speedy responses to any disaster on highways, including damages from flood, snow, fire within highway tunnels, accidents on bridges, including the collapse of bridges. It takes over duties from other units of the company to be the sole control tower for safety.

The KEC wants to take care of all accidents on its highways in real time and respond quickly, which is being managed by the Integrated Disaster Control Situation Room.

The Disaster Control System is a system the highway corp. created on its own initiative.  It is based on electronic maps’ disaster situation pages, which show accidents on highways, floods, heavy snowfall and typhoons, along with CCTVs placed on the major highways so that it can alert departments in charge of disaster relief on a real time basis and respond quickly.

Min Chung, head of the Disaster Control Situation Room, said this year will be the first to make all highways safer from all kinds of disasters, in order to contribute to making people driving on highways happier.

In the meantime, the KEC won the priority bidder right for a project to manage and repair the East-West Highway center section, design the supplementary installations on the highway, and supervise the construction in Algeria from the Alegerienne de Gestion des Autoroutes, AGA. The KEC participated in the bidding with Kyungdong Engineering as a partner. The highway company’s negotiations with ADA as the priority bidder were completed in September. It awaits the signing of the final contract at any moment.

The project involves designs of supplementary installations, including resting facilities in the central section of the East-West Highway, installing a toll-fee collection system, a light communication system design, and supervision of the construction of those installations on the highway, the KEC said.

The highway corp. has been supervising the construction of highways in 14 countries, such as Peru, Cambodia, Ethiopia and others, including installations connected to a toll collection system. Altogether it is involved in 14 projects in such countries as Vietnam, Oman, Tanzania and Bolivia, the KEC boasted.

Lee Hyun-seung, the chief of the Overseas Planning Team for the KEC, said the supervision of the Padma Bridge Project has been won amid competition from other famous construction engineering companies. It demonstrates the KEC’s technologies and prowess to build long bridges around the world. It will be an occasion for the KEC and other Korean engineering firms to show off their technological expertise to the world, and at the same time boost their international competitive strength of their technologies.

Korea laid a foundation for its national economic growth and expedited its speed of development with the opening of the Gyeongbu Expressway in 1970, President Kim Hak-song said on the company’s homepage.