This paper presents the result of a research project carried out to investigate the safety effect of the hard shoulder running in freeway facilities. Traffic congestion is increasing in urban freeways and freeway operation authorities in many countries are applying a variety of traffic control devices to increase vehicle carrying capacity at peak times. The hard shoulder running is one of the efficient devices applied to deal with traffic congestion in freeways and it creates an extra lane, relatively cheaply, at fixed times where there are known bottlenecks. Despite the popular use in South Korean freeway facilities, the hard shoulder running became a research subject recently, because many crashes start to occur within its surrounding areas. Both the total crash number and the injury crash number in the hard shoulder running have significantly increased. Transportation engineers are wondering whether this crash increase is casual or correlated with the application of the hard shoulder running. If proved that the hard shoulder running carries undesirable results, its application in freeway facilities will be no longer justifiable.