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Transportation

How Japan Won its ‘Traffic War’

Until the early 1970s, Japan endured a high rate of road fatalities. Now the nation boasts one of the world’s best traffic safety records. Here's why.

A typical Tokyo street displays three features that assist in pedestrian safety: a narrow travel lane, smaller vehicles, and no street parking. 

A typical Tokyo street displays three features that assist in pedestrian safety: a narrow travel lane, smaller vehicles, and no street parking. 

Photographer: NurPhoto/Getty Images

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In mid-August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that the surge in American traffic deaths is continuing: An estimated 9,560 people died on US roadways in the first quarter of 2022, 7% more than a year ago and the highest first quarter total in two decades.

The traffic safety slide is a trend that precedes Covid-19, but the disruptions of the pandemic seemed to exacerbate the issue in the US, a phenomenon that observers like New York Times’ David Leonhardt have attributed to mental health issues and smartphone use: “Many Americans have felt frustrated or unhappy, and it seems to have affected their driving,” he wrote recently, adding in a tweet that “traffic deaths began to rise around 2015…around the same time that smartphones became ubiquitous.”