The measure is aimed at reducing accidents in urban areas with heavy pedestrian traffic and narrow streets, marking a major shift in the country’s traffic rules as these roads account for around 70% of all ordinary roads nationwide.
[…] above [30 kph] the risk of pedestrians suffering fatal injuries in accidents is said to spike.
[…]
The aim of the speed limit change “is to prevent accidents by stopping dangerous driving, such as failing to slow down even on busy streets”
60 kph seems really high for residential, yikes
The problem is also that likely no one did 60, but rather close to 70.
So for everyone thinking 30 is too low, do not fret, people will just drive 40 anyhow and that is not too slow.
Not in Switzerland, hehe.
Yeah a lot of people will be going over the 60 and just get into crazy dangerous speeds when they need to be alert and cautious. My area is 30 and some people are very clearly hitting like 50-60 and it makes me want to chase their cars down but I’d never catch up, cos they’re going so god damned fast. Allowing 60 is going to invite some massive twats to hit 80
Yeah, they should’ve enforced a 20kmph or even 10kmph rule.
Surprised as that’s even faster than most places in the car-brained US. It’s “only” 48kph (30mph) on the high side and 32kph (20mph) most other places
Right?? I’m in the US and was really surprised that even we consider that way too fast for residential. It’s 20mph on my street and I would be livid with anything over 30
Japan actually does very little in the way of pedestrian or bicycle friendly road design compared to most European countries (there are a few things worth learning from IMO, just not as many as, say, the Netherlands).
It works as well as it does because of the narrow streets and how little car traffic they have (even less than the Netherlands, which does way more to try and reign in cars but has way more of them). They have so little car traffic because you have to prove you have a permanent parking space in order to buy a car, there’s no on-street parking, and the public transit network is very extensive. That and the aforementioned narrow streets just make driving inconvenient compared to the other options.
They’ve done this in a few areas of Melbourne. The fatal injury data is certainly a compelling case:
“the risk of fatality for a pedestrian hit by a vehicle travelling at 30km/h is around 10%, compared to approximately 40% at 40km/h and more than 80% at 50km/h.”
https://acrs.org.au/evidence-supports-30km-h-speed-limits-in-school-zones/I will admit that driving at 30km/h is pretty painful sometimes.
I will admit that driving at 30km/h is pretty painful sometimes.
That’s probably street design issue.
This. 30km/h is common in Germany and if the road design is good, then it feels perfectly fine.
It’s also an issue of sitting in a box being shielded from the outsides. 30 km/h on a bicycle feels very different from 30 km/h in a metal box.
It would be painful to drive at that speed. Slowest you’ll ever see in the US on public roads is generally 25mph/40kph even in residential or downtown areas. Even then most people are driving 30mph+, 48kph+
40km/h has been the minimum speed limit on public roads in Aus for quite a while, and it’s still the norm. 30 is pretty new and will probs take some time to adjust to.
the US has some 15mph roads, and plentiful 20 mph residential roads
I have seen them, but it’s extremely rare in my area. Maybe campgrounds and parking lots, but that’s it.
in my city all unlabeled roads are 20mph
Interesting, I’ve traveled a decent portion of the US, but yet to see that.
Sidewalks are quite rare outside major corridors in space-constrained Japan (you’re often lucky to get so much as a gutter or a hint of a shoulder to walk/cycle on), so this is an overdue move indeed.
Pictured below is a pretty normal street width/layout in both rural and urban Japan, and the street I lived on was about 30-50% narrower than even this, and had high walls on either side (zero setbacks).
You know I couldn’t imagine going 40 miles an hour down that road but I’m sure people do
yikes. it’s 60kph now on a street like that? half that seems far more reasonable, even without giant trucks and suv on the streets.
Yeah but it’s Japan. So, in my experience at least, if driers can see pedestrians they’re not driving that fast at all. It would be dishonourable 😄 but seriously, they’re driving carefully.
Just passed my driving test. You’re legally obligated to drive bellow 10 km/h or stop completely if there are pedestrians on roads like this.
There we have it, everyone!
My carbrain seeing the title: Wtf, 30 for normal residential areas is a bit TOO low, we have 50 in most of Europe and that’s just fine
My carbrain after seeing the photo: Nah this would be 20 in my country and in the vicinity of pedestrians, at pedestrian speed. AKA you’d definitely see one of these signs.
It’s wild they allowed 60 on streets like this in the first place. That must feel like street racing going down this narrow alley. I was sort of expecting a regular street with a sidewalk upon seeing the title and the fact that it used to be 60.
It’s going to 30km/h (20mph) in many more countries now as a result of the Stockholm Declaration on Road Safety in 2020 (later endorsed by the UN) which puts a lot of emphasis on specifically 20lm/h speed limits. In the UK there is a big push for 20mph; in Wales most roads have been made 20mph.
There are still 3,558 pedestrian deaths per year in the EU, while there are 7,080 per year in the US.
The Stockholm Declaration aims for 50% fewer road deaths in 2030 compared to 2020.
A pedestrian hit at 30 km/h has about a 90% chance of surviving, but at 50 km/h, survival drops to about 20%. So while I get the appeal of driving fast, I think it’s a very reasonable measure. 1000s of deaths per year to shave minutes off arrival times is not acceptable.
Source: am cycling campaigner in the UK
In the Netherlands cities are going to 30kmh anywhere cars come in contact with other traffic participants.
In the Netherlands those rural looking roads are up to 80kmh, up to 100 in Germany, 90 in Belgium.
I’m assuming that it had stayed so high for so long precisely because almost everyode was driving well under the speed limit.
I hope so.
30 km/hr means people can legally drive EV autocycles on roads.
No, the aspect ratio is correct.
?
they can already, there is no “minimal max speed” limit
Depends the jurisdiction. In many places in the US there is a minimum speed to prevent traffic from bottlenecking.
What does US have to do with this?
Well the USA is one jurisdiction Japan is another jurisdiction and there are many other jurisdictions so again depending on the jurisdiction it could depend on whether you’re an asshole or not by asking this type of question.
I assumed you brought up US because there was some sort of direct example that explains the effects of this change or something.
In residential roads?
Largest Japanese vheicle /s
idk why people writing “kilos per hour” pisses me off so much. 1000 what per hour? Surely any other letter makes more sense to remove than the actual unit??
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.That’s the USA for you, they have MPH so no way they use something as serious as km/h, gotta USify that.
Yes because when talking about cars I’m sure he was referring to 1000 kilograms per hour. Use your skills of inference.
you must’ve missed the “idk why” part of my comment
With 20 MPH (32 km/h), this is also becoming more and more standard in residential areas in the UK.
And the resulting massive drop in numbers of fatal accidents speaks for itself.
Sounds like the isekai levels have gotten too high.
certainly will make bikes competitive.
In the us we just raise the speed limit to 65 mph in school zones and give everyone a lifted blacked out f250.
I’m not sure … will there still be enough people getting isekai’d after this change? Other worlds might run low on personnel …
You don’t need speed to kill on the road.
Source: konosuba
I can almost run that fast. Now lower it to 20, and we might not really need them!
Are you an Olympic athlete?
I mean, I can run about 20 KM/h for a short while at least. I was running after a bike, and the guy was measuring the speed on it.
It was an electric bike and he was going slow, but I can do 20 KM/h at least.
You should run competitively, I can maybe just hit that speed if I do an intense sprint
