Skip to main content

Japanese road safety; addressing ageing drivers

The Japanese authorities are taking steps to ensure greater road safety for ageing drivers. This follows data showing that elderly drivers are involved ina worryingly high number of serious road crashes in Japan. And with the age demographic of the country increasing, the problem looks likely to grow unless addressed effectively. As a result, older drivers will be able to benefit from fixed charges for using taxis, in a bid to tempt them away from using their own cars. Older drivers may also face changes t
June 27, 2019 Read time: 1 min
The Japanese authorities are taking steps to ensure greater road safety for ageing drivers. This follows data showing that elderly drivers are involved ina  worryingly high number of serious road crashes in Japan. And with the age demographic of the country increasing, the problem looks likely to grow unless addressed effectively. As a result, older drivers will be able to benefit from fixed charges for using taxis, in a bid to tempt them away from using their own cars. Older drivers may also face changes to regulations, requiring them to drive only those vehicles equipped with the latest safety technology. This last issue will be decided by the Japanese Government in the second quarter of 2020. A requirement for all new vehicles to be fitted with automatic braking technology will also be reviewed at the same time.

Related Content

  • UK Government must show “much greater leadership” on road safety
    August 20, 2012
    A leading road safety campaigner has urged the UK government to show “much greater leadership” on the issue after new Department for Transport (DfT) figures revealed a rise in pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads. The number of cyclists killed or seriously injured (KSI) on UK roads between April 1 and June 30, 2012 rose 13% to 700, compared to 621 over the same three months of 2011.
  • Campaign urges UK drivers to get eye tested every 2 years
    August 5, 2013
    A new campaign is calling on UK drivers to ‘sharpen up’ their act by getting their eyesight tested every two years to ensure their vision meets legal standards and they aren't putting people in danger. The campaign by road safety charity Brake, in association with the DVLA, insurer RSA and Specsavers, comes as new research shows many drivers are failing to ensure they can see properly on every journey. A survey of 1,000 UK drivers by Brake, RSA and Specsavers finds that a quarter of drivers (26%) haven't ha
  • Spanish road safety shows continued improvement
    January 5, 2015
    Provisional data from Spain shows a continuing drop in fatal road crashes during 2014. Of note is the fact that the country has already achieved the 2020 target of reducing the death rate to 36/1,000,000 inhabitants. The drop in the death rate was slight, just 2%, but still of importance. The provisional data shows that there were 1,131 fatalities and 4,874 people seriously injured in 2014. And this last is of note as the number of people seriously injured in crashes dropped 8% during 2014 compared with the
  • Increase in fatal vehicle crashes across US
    December 4, 2015
    A worrying increase in fatalities from vehicle crashes has been noted in the US during the first half of 2015. This comes in the wake of several years of improvements in road safety. A new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the first six months of 2015 shows that motor vehicle fatalities increased 8.1% compared to the same period last year.