In the past several weeks alone, elderly Japanese drivers have been wreaking havoc across the nation, breaking through median barriers into oncoming traffic, plowing over pedestrians crossing the road and smashing into other cars. In all these cases, someone was killed.
As Japan’s population continues to age, the problem is only getting worse.
Drivers aged 75 and over were connected to 459 fatal accidents last year, 13 percent of Japan’s total, up from 7.4 percent a decade earlier, Japanese National Police Agency data show.
Stopping the carnage on the roads is an “urgent problem,” the agency said in a statement.
“Preventing road accidents caused by changes in the physical condition of drivers is an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with,” Mineko Baba of Keio University’s Center for Integrated Medical Research wrote last year in a research report. “Laws and society haven’t caught up to the situation of the rapidly increasing number of dementia patients.”
One quarter of Japanese are 65 or older, and the proportion is forecast to reach 38 percent within five decades.
In one of the worst incidents, an 87-year-old man in October last year crashed his light truck into a group of children walking to school in Yokohama, killing a six-year-old boy and injuring two others.
Just this past weekend, two people in their 80s were killed when their car collided head-on with a large truck inside a tunnel in Gifu Prefecture, local media reports said, adding that one of the vehicles likely crossed the center line.
The government is stepping up efforts to get the most dangerous seniors off the road.
Changes to the law took effect in March requiring drivers over 75 to take a cognitive test when renewing their licenses or if they commit offenses such as running a red light or turning into the wrong lane.
Those who fail are ordered to undergo a medical exam, and if they flunk that, they are stripped of their licenses.
As many as 15,000 licenses a year might be forcibly revoked, the police agency projects.
However, Japan’s overall death toll on the roads has been declining for years, reaching a 67-year low last year of 3,904 deaths, police figures show. As a result, the percentage involving elderly drivers has nearly doubled.
Older drivers are also increasingly volunteering to hand over their licenses.
Under a program that has been in place for nearly two decades, 345,000 people relinquished their driving credentials last year, up 21 percent from a year earlier.
In the first three months after the new law took effect, 1,271 elderly people a day on average returned their licenses, up from 946 a day last year, the agency said.
Some companies are offering incentives for seniors to hand over their driving papers.
Elderly people who give up driving in Tokorozawa are offered a year of free transportation on a community bus service that runs throughout the city, plus 20 percent off purchases at Mister Donut.
Other perks include a 10 percent discount on a local home-help service, 10 percent off taxi fares and even discounts on funeral services.
Banks and insurance companies are also getting in on the act. Bank of Kyoto Ltd gives a 1 percent discount on car loans for anyone living with a senior citizen who has given up the keys.
Awa Bank Ltd offers an additional 0.3 percentage points on time deposits for elderly folks who stop driving.
MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings Inc said last month it is developing an in-car box that sounds a warning if the vehicle goes outside a predetermined area or drives the wrong way and alerts family members via a smartphone app.
However, losing the right to drive and the independence that accompanies it might also hasten physical decline and contribute to dementia, said Hiroshi Takahashi, a former professor of welfare policy at the International University of Health and Welfare Graduate School who advises governments on elderly care.
Policies should encourage innovation to give seniors more options for mobility, such as self-driving cars, he said.
Takao Inui, a elderly resident of Tokyo’s Shibuya District, said he uses his car about once a week and has no plan to give it up for perhaps three years. While public transportation is readily available, he prefers to drive.
“I’m aware that at 77, things are starting to get dangerous, so I’m very careful when I drive,” he said. “If I got sick or something scary happened, then I’d have to think about it — although I guess that might already be too late.”
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