Quoted By:
A report claim that, in Japan, pedestrian and bikers are particularly vulnerable to traffic accident. From data in 2015, 37.3% people in Japan died from traffic accident were pedestrian, and another 15.6% were bikers. Both figures are much higher than other developed countries. According to a professor, the main reason is that Japanese roads are designed to give cars priority over pedestrian. Unlike European countries that have a long history separating car traffic and pedestrian traffic even back when there was only horsecars on the road, it's only recently that such concept have arrived Japan. Especially, during the time around the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Japan was rushing to construct roads for car in the fastest and cheapest way. The professor claimed it mean safety for bikers and pedestrian were being put at a less valued when those road are built, and that even on national routes there are road that don't have physical separation between car lanes and pedestrians, which is why the proportion of pedestrian and bikers death in Japan have been so high. It's argued that Japan should invest more in installing guard rails and steel poles along roads to separate car traffic from pedestrain.
