TOKYO, June 29, 2021—The truck driver, apparently intoxicated from daytime drinking, slammed into a group of school children on their return home June 28 in a suburban road near Tokyo killing two of them, a disaster repeated time and again in Japan.
Police arrested the 60-year-old driver for negligence of duty, and the drunken man is solely responsible for the accident. The rig he was driving looked like at least a two generations old vehicle, according to Japanese television video footage. Presumably, the vehicle was not properly maintained and/or had mechanical failures resulting from evading compulsory inspections and maintenance.
But the accident, poring closely, reveal more than that: Bureaucracy apathy and neglect of resident calls for pedestrial safety. The two-lane road was wide enough to enable vehicles to run at high speed, yet had no guard rails to protect pedestrians who had no choice but to walk the road to reach their destinations, including school children. The road is believed to be administered by either the state or the local government, Chiba Prefecture.
Residents have been repeatedly asking the city of Yachimata and the prefecture to put up guard rails, according to media reports. What’s likely to have resulted, in my guestimation, was no action after their consultations with police failed to produce an agreement as police traditionally demands that it be in charge of road traffic, not the city, prefecture or the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. So, no guardrails and the deaths of the two school children and serious injuries to another kid.
Recently, driving through downtown Tokyo for the first time in many months, I was annoyed by bad manners of other drivers if not all that sped through other cars at dangerous speed and tailgate others that keep distance from the vehicle ahead, and jump red lights.
In fact, reckless driving is soaring in Japan. No matter whether vehicles are increasingly equipped with advanced safety features, including automatic emergency brake, lane-keeping, sudden acceleration prevention, traction controls and so on, the number of accidents is not necessarily decreasing in lockstep with a decline in the number of drivers and gross miles driven.
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