Tokyo Speed Limit
 

I was speaking to a Japanese gentleman who spends quite a bit of time driving in Tokyo. He told me he felt the 50kph speed limit in parts of the city was too low, he said he thought the speed limit should be 70kph in those areas where it is now 50kph. He went on to say that he thought the Japanese authorities treated Japanese drivers like children.
So many of you know Tokyo inside-out, do you think 50kph is too low a limit?

There are way too many Japanese drivers that do drive like children! (And too many of those are taxi drivers :eek: )

In the last few years I've only witnessed one serious road accident in London. Since 2002 I've been in Tokyo once or twice a year for relatively short excursions and seen a serious accident on approximately 50% of those visits. And I'm lucky as I've never been involved in one. Not all FTers can say the same :(.

There are Express Ways that snake across the city that have higher speed limits but outside of these in residential areas (and the whole of Tokyo is a residential area), no, I don't think it's too high at all.

If drivers in Tokyo put the same amount of time and dedication into polishing their driving skills as they do into polishing their vehicles then I might agree with your acquaintance. But as it stands now, no. Driving standard are awful (and this from someone who knows Madrid and the Valencia region well - a terrible indictment)

Perhaps when driving whilst overtired/exhausted becomes as unacceptable as driving whilst under the influence of alcohol then things will improve.

The expressway speed limits, both urban and rural, are also ridiculously low (80-90 km/hr) -- but I heard a rumor that they don't bother with ticketing until you are at least 30km/hr over the limit. However, don't take that as authoritative!

one of my students whom i taught english to told me how he went speeding..no that's an understatement..basically on a joyride driving through Tokyo or maybe a little bit outside of the city. Eventually got caught and had his licensed revoked. This guy was weird/crazy and this was one of his stories. :cool:

Frankly, I think anyone who drives a private car in Tokyo is insane. Never mind the traffic, the narrow streets, the scarcity of parking, and the high price of what little parking is available.

The transit system is one of the best in the world, and between the surface trains, subways, buses, and taxis, the only reason to drive is a sheer impulse to show off one's ultra-shiny new vehicle (just about the only kind of car you see).

Also, I'm scratching my head over the thought of driving really fast on a Tokyo street and not running into anything.

The speed limits in Japan are generally slow.

Six lane, inter-city expressways have maximum speed limits of 100kph; although many have lower limits (often 80kph). The Shuto expressway, which is Tokyo's primary urban freeway system, has mostly a 60kph limit.

Speed limits on expressways are generally observed more in the breach. If you're doing 100kph on the Tomei, you'd better be in the leftmost lane.

For the regular roads in Tokyo, the speed limits are more appropriate.

No, seeing as how the average flow of traffic is usually about 20km over the posted speed limit anyway.

Driving in Tokyo
 

Driving in Tokyo is quite the experience, but it is very safe. Driving nabits are culturally specific so it's easy for foreigners to cause problems because they don't know those unspoken rules of the road. Compared to where I grew up and learned to drive, Japanese drivers are cautious and always assume that the other guy isn't watching out for them. This is a good thing. Where I come from the opposite is true, "I'm going to do whatever the hell I want and it's up to everyone else to watch out for me."

As an interseting aside, I have a friend who is a lawyer for an insurance company, which is quasi government monopoly. They keep track of driver statistics, cross-referenced by all sorts of data points, one being country of birth. Hands down, the safest drivers (lowest number of accident reports by demographic ratio) in my home region are Japanese nationals who have emmigrated to the region. This is probably due to the driver training that everyone must undertake in order to receive their license.

The worst group of drivers fulfills the stereotype that I'm sure evryone is familiar with, and I won't even bother to mention it.

Actually, U.K. and also Japan are two of the safest countries and the number of deaths in auto accidents in Japan has been declining for awhile.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0081225b2.html

http://www.driveandstayalive.com/inf...apita-2004.htm

Personally I drive as fast as I can as often as I can...so yeah 50 is too slow....cops here won't even begin to bother you until you're at least 20 kph over the limit ime.

Since referring to websites seems more important than taking into account our own experiences and opinions, here's a link to a site previously posted by jib71 on some of those awful driving habits (that certainly lead to many accidents if not world breaking fatality records)

http://www.thejapanfaq.com/bikerfaq-intro.html

Goodness knows how many electricity poles within Tokyo side streets would be brought down if drivers had the opportunity to slam into them at more than 20kmph speeds...

Car ownership is lower in central Tokyo than in the rest of the country, as one would expect. But it's unimaginative to assume that car owners here are all insane.

Is it insane to want a car if you run your own restaurant and public transport doesn't run at 2.00am when you need to get home, or you're a working mom who needs to take your two pre-school kids to daycare on your way to your office job in another suburb, or you're a businessman who visits multiple clients every day and finds that it's inefficient to try to get around all of those factories and offices only by bus or train, or you often need to transport an elderly relative who simply can't cope with the stairs in subway stations, or you enjoy making weekend trips to the ski slopes with your buddies, or you find that having a fast car helps you pick up members of the opposite sex... ?

As in any city, there are a few unfathomables... like the unscratched, yellow Hummer that's parked near my apartment in a side-street, which has a pancake-flat surface, a 30km speed limit and barely enough width to cope with a k-sha and a bicycle side-by-side. But, who knows, maybe the owner likes girls (or guys?) who like Hummers...

As to the OP, I think that traffic cops in Tokyo behave in some strange ways - They have been known to enforce some rules that don't greatly contribute to the public good. For example, I hear stories of people getting points on their license because they didn't quite come to a complete stop at a level crossing. In these stories, it often turns out that they could have gotten off with just a warning if they'd been suitably humble and apologetic to the cop. There's also a wierd habit of periodic crackdowns "Safe driving week", which result in skewed behaviour (Offices warn their staff "not to ignore lights for the next few days" or "not to drink and drive this week").

On the other hand, there are some things about Japanese traffic police that I applaud -- For example, the fact that speed cameras tend to be used to encourage law abiding behaviour in danger spots or places where speeding is a problem rather than gratuitously placing them absolutely everywhere as a means to generate revenue (which is how things have gone in the UK). I am also fairly impressed (with a couple of reservations) by the periodic retraining that the traffic police provide to people who renew their licenses or commit offenses. Sure, it's usually just a series of lectures - but some of the police lecturers that I've witnessed have really good teaching skills.

Iin my experience, carelessness (by which I mean driving without an awareness of other road users and without preparedness for what may come up) is a more common fault among Japanese drivers than recklessness (by which I mean driving the vehicle beyond the performance at which the driver can safely control it). I think it's rather patronizing to say this is "childish". I think it's more a result of the training that learner drivers get here. I meet so many people who think that road safety is one-dimensional (and that dimension is speed).

Or for many ex pats a stint in japan is a chance to own something which is either not available or beyond your means in your home country

To be honest lap lap I find your experiences quite unusual. In all my trips to japan I've only ever "seen" one accident and it was very minor. I contrast that to my time in other places such as chicago when on one trip home from work I saw 11 separate accidents (and a couple of those very serious). While the japanese do have some, umm, quirky habits I don't think it's fair to suggest that serious accidents are far more commonplace than in most other areas.

I'll also say that in my experience UK drivers are the best of any country I've been to. If you're using the UK as an "average" benchmark you may find yourself marking other countries too harshly because I think UK drivers are well above the global average

Apart from the serious accidents and their aftermaths I mentioned that I’ve been witness to (and in that I include shrouded bodies and mangled bicycles) what I didn’t include in my 50% figure are all the minor accidents I see in Tokyo on an almost daily basis when I’m there.

Parts of Narita town are a no go area for me at night as the traffic genuinely frightens me. I don't feel safe at all on the narrow streets (traffic seems much faster than in the midst of Tokyo)

My benchmark for urban driving isn’t London, but Spain. The main difference between Spain and Japan is that Spaniards know (collectively) that they are lousy drivers.

And you shouldn’t think my experience is so unusual. Check out post 4 (and 6) in this thread
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japan...xis-tokyo.html
Of course, regular posters on this forum are a very small sample fraction of the Tokyo population....

Driving to Hakone the other weekend (in my shiny-sports-car-designed-to-attract-the-opposite-sex), I saw the police pull over one person who had passed me at about 150kph, and I saw two other police cars: one driving exactly 95kph with a lot of traffic passing him verrrrry slowly, and one on the side of the road presumably with radar. I blew past him 30kph over the speed limit (100kph in a 70kph) and the guy in front of my was faster, but neither of us were stopped.

In the Japanese licensing system, the tipping point between minor points loss and major points loss is 40kph over the limit on the expressway; I do wonder whether the police pull people over on that basis.