Traffic Safety Policies Including School Routes

Ensuring School Route Safety

Typified by a case in Kameoka City, Kyoto Prefecture in April 2012, in which a car collided with children on their way to school, a series of severe traffic accidents causing deaths and injuries have occurred involving children on school routes. Therefore, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the National Police Agency (NPA) cooperated to carry out an emergency review of public elementary and special elementary school route safety nationwide, resulting in measures required at 2,928 places in Fukuoka Prefecture.

Since 2012, countermeasures have been taken such as school boards carrying out changes in school routes, the placement of volunteer guards, maintenance of sidewalks and the widening of road shoulders performed by road management authorities, and the police are proceeding to install traffic lights and crosswalks and so forth.