Last month, the National Police Agency announced it would halve vehicular speed limits on so-called seikatsu doro, meaning residential streets. In particular, the new limits would cover roads that pass through residential neighborhoods and which don’t have center lines or sidewalks. Typically, these roads are narrower than public roads, with the NPA designating them as being no more than 5.5 meters in width. Since in most cases these roads do not have marked speed limits, it means vehicles can drive up to 60 kilometers per hour on them unless otherwise indicated. The new plan would thus reduce speed limits on these roads to 30kph. 

According to a May 23 article in the Asahi Shimbun, automobile accidents involving child pedestrians has been on the increase in recent years. The most dangerous months for child pedestrians tend to be May and June. Just last April a 3rd grade girl in Aichi Prefecture was killed by a truck, and in May there were accidents in Sapporo and Hamamatsu in which two 4th graders were killed. All three accidents happened on residential streets either at crosswalks or along the sides of roads. The NPA reports that between 2019 and 2023, 4,430 children of elementary school age or younger were either killed or seriously injured in vehicular accidents. More happened in May and June, and the most common time period for such accidents was between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, when children tend to be walking home from school. 

A journalist who specializes in traffic issues told the Asahi that after children enter the new school year in April they become acclimatized to the route they take to school and may become less cautious, which could lead to more accidents, so drivers need to be more alert. In fact, she says, drivers should avoid school zones altogether, an opinion that likely will not get much traction in real life. Though legally pedestrians have the right-of-way in all traffic encounters, practically speaking there are few measures put in place—be they related to infrastructure or police presence—that restrict vehicular traffic for the safety of pedestrians, whether adults or children. 

A May 31 broadcast on FNN News attempted to explain the infrastructural problems related to residential streets, which are defined by “a lot of foot traffic,” including children walking to school. The main problem with residential streets, especially in older neighborhoods, has to do with visibility and maneuverability. Owing to poor city planning, property owners are subject to few restrictions with regard to what they can do within their borders. They can build structures right up to their property lines, which means stone walls, fences, and even residential structures can be flush with the street. Such structures limit visibility for both drivers and pedestrians and effectively make the street feel even narrower than it already is. 

In relation to the new speed limits, residential streets are defined by another aspect that is less remarked upon, according to FNN: they are often used as shortcuts by vehicles that are trying to get from one main thoroughfare to another in order to save time. If there are no speed limits indicated, then drivers assume it is the national default, 60kph, thus making these streets even more dangerous for pedestrians. An FNN film crew went to one residential street in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo, that was 5.5 meters wide and measured the speed of vehicles passing through. They found the average was 42kph, which is still considered dangerous for such a narrow street. In addition to setting speed limits, the authorities can also install speed bumps, but as the NPA has said, the amount of labor and cost involved in setting up physical safety measures on all residential streets nationwide is unfeasible, so a blanket speed limit of 30kph is a more practical solution.

But as one interviewee, who identifies himself as a professional “traffic accident investigator,” pointed out, if there are no signs indicating parameters, how is a driver to know that the street they are on qualifies as a “residential street” in accordance with the law? Of course, drivers should exercise common sense and assume that if they are on a street that is relatively narrow and offers less visibility than a main thoroughfare, the 30kph speed limit applies, but the investigator seems to think that the new rules may simply sow confusion. In any case, such a rule is pointless without consistent enforcement by police. Drivers must believe they will be cited if the new regulation is to have any effect. There is an existing law that says when passing a pedestrian on the side of a road, a vehicle must yield at least 1.5 meters, an action that becomes more difficult on narrower streets. Under such circumstances, following reduced speed limits is even more important as the slower speed allows the driver to brake in time to avoid hitting a pedestrian. 

The overriding principle for increasing traffic safety as represented by the new rule is the regulation of behavior, because in Japan it’s already too late to modify the physical environment to achieve the safety goals desired. Japanese public space is cramped. Private property is sacrosanct. In most so-called developed countries, property owners must cede a certain margin of their land for the public good, by making sure nothing on their property interferes with sidewalks and other facilities. Japan has setback rules for development that compel property owners to give up land for things like wider roads, but these rules can only be implemented when the owner renovates a property, which is why Tokyo is still filled with warren-like neighborhoods where ambulances and fire trucks can’t pass because the streets aren’t wide enough. The suburbs are no different, and the main victims of this lack of foresight and subsequent failure of political or bureaucratic will are children. 

The Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) runs a regular Accident File in its newsletter that discusses road safety, and in the March 15, 2022, edition, the topic was tsugakuro, or streets that children use to walk to and from school. These streets rarely have sidewalks, guardrails, or, for that matter, pedestrian spaces delineated by painted lines on the sides of the road. The column goes through all the problems inherent in residential streets—the lack of visibility and room to maneuver, the way they are used by vehicles as short cuts, and the lack of marked speed limits—but then it uses as an example a famous incident that happened in June 2021 on a street that actually had clear visibility and relatively ample maneuverability, and which yet resulted in the death of two children returning from school and the serious injury of three of their classmates. 

The accident happened in Yachimata, Chiba Prefecture, on a road that went through farmland. There are no structures blocking the view, and the road itself, though it lacks a center line, is more than 7 meters wide. It is used as a shortcut by commercial trucks, but it is also the most direct route from a residential area to the nearest elementary school, so children regularly use it to commute on foot. It also has no sidewalk or guardrails, and on the fateful day the driver of a truck, who also happened to be drunk, plowed into this group of five kids while traveling at 60kph. Legally speaking, the street did not qualify as what the authorities would call a “residential street,” so had the new rule been in force, the driver could theoretically go 60kph. 

This particular tragedy proves the limited effectiveness of countermeasures implemented to affect behavior, a point that JAF studied in a survey of how drivers respond to crosswalks. Between August 11 and 30, 2021, between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm, at 94 crosswalks-without-traffic-signals in 47 prefectures, JAF observed whether drivers stopped when pedestrians were present, either on the crosswalk itself or at the side of the road ready to use the crosswalk. Of the 8,281 vehicles observed when pedestrians were present, only 2,534 stopped for them, or 30.6 percent. The good news is that this portion was 9 points higher than it was the year before.

Even if the behavioral approach receives more publicity or more enforcement, it will never be as effective as actual physical safety measures, which the authorities seem unable to provide. In the Yachimata case, parents in the area had already been lobbying the local government to put up guardrails on the road in question, years before the accident occurred, and the city balked, saying it would require the purchase of land and other actions it couldn’t afford. In the end, they installed a traffic light at the intersection at one end of the road in question. 

Perhaps the larger question is why huge commercial trucks can drive anywhere in Japan. Even in the U.S., whose auto-centric culture is so prominent that pedestrian deaths have risen markedly in recent years with the increasing preference for larger, heavier private vehicles, trucks over a certain weight are banned from residential streets. Because Japan relies so much on vehicles for transporting goods, it allows them to go everywhere, regardless of the quality of the roads, so there’s obviously a tradeoff that the authorities feel is acceptable. Does the public feel the same way?