I wondered whether the smaller cars and trucks, the many narrower streets, and the generally slower speeds I’m seeing in Tokyo mean a lower pedestrian injury/fatality rate than North American cities. So I looked it up. Tokyo: 1.04 fatalities/100,000 people. Houston: 15 fatalities/100,000 people.
Hm, Tokyo's worse than Vancouver & nearly the same as Surrey, which is the worst in BC, apparently. 0.36 & 1.03/100K respectively.
🤷
What about the social responsibility aspect? Japanese feel a greater feeling of responsibility to their fellow beings than Americans, I think. They're probably more polite on the road. I'd like to see a study correlating aggressive driving with accidents.
That is definitely going to be a factor. You can see that civility toward one another in every interaction here.
In UK, we have laws that address pedestrian safety in car design. I suspect Japan has similar laws.
I think Canada’s overall rate is less than both of those?
I’m sure it’s higher as a proportion of the number of pedestrians of course
Villages in Japan are laid out just like that, as villages. Small streets, dense construction. Neighborhoods in Tokyo are basically the exact same. There's a lesson to be learned in that--cities are essentially big collections of villages, and rural development should have a good urban form.
It’s almost like the numbers are directly related…
If you think about it, driving these smaller, less powerful vehicles HAS to result in lower fatality and injury rates. It also has to mean less aggressive driving, which is very apparent to me here. Also, cops don’t look militarized here. Cars and motorcycles are small, light-coloured.
I agree, because there are other examples of slower roads. But I wonder what factor the higher standard for driving licence tests makes?
Do they have a higher standard? What does that look like in practice?
Absolutely. A good reference point is to look at which countries can swap licenses without any extra test. In NZ, Aus, UK and EU, a Japanese license can be directly swapped but a US license holder has to sit a local test
Watched a motorcycle cop pull over a young person on an e-scooter yesterday - he approached the rider with a smile and unthreatening body language. It was a noticeably different vibe than anything we see in North America.
And the number of people I see sharing space with pedestrians on sidewalks here is just wild. I’d like to see those injury numbers. I mean, to me as a visitor, it looks like it just works but I wonder about the reality. Some riders DO move uncomfortably fast but most don’t. And there’s courtesy.
I find it's similar to the Netherlands - when there's more of a culture of ped/bicycle mixing, it all kind of works, but is confronting if you're not used to mixing with bicycles. I swear there's a 'sixth sense' you develop to look out for bikes.
The anti-cycling war in North America just seems so performative when I see this stuff here. North Americans have weaponized car culture in every aspect of our lives. It obviously doesn’t have to be that way.