Car crashes in world’s oldest nation spur adjustments by automakers

Automakers in Japan, the place virtually 30% of the inhabitants is 65 or older, are taking the lead on adapting vehicles so the nation’s legions of aged drivers can really feel extra assured — and be safer — behind the wheel.
A run of accidents involving older individuals behind the wheel has upped the strain from regulators to standardize superior options. Automatic brakes will probably be required for all new automobiles bought domestically from this 12 months, for instance, and corporations from Toyota Motor Corp. to Nissan Motor Co. are using good expertise to make vehicles extra consumer pleasant for older individuals.
It’s additionally turning into extra of a precedence after a spate of as public railways in rural areas disappear, worsening an isolation disaster made solely extra stark by the coronavirus pandemic. Without any technique of getting round, aged individuals in Japan are more and more confined to their properties, their lives shrinking as transport choices evaporate.
A latest high-profile deadly accident spotlighted the difficulty. In February final 12 months, Japanese prosecutors indicted 89-year-old Kozo Iizuka on a cost of negligence leading to loss of life and harm after a crash in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district. The former senior bureaucrat was on his approach to a French restaurant along with his spouse in April 2019 when his Toyota Prius plowed by a crossing, killing a toddler and her mom and harming a number of others.
The accident made headlines, not least due to Iizuka’s high-ranking authorities place. Public sentiment swiftly turned towards Iizuka, who’s again in court docket this week after pleading not responsible in October. The incident additionally sparked a nationwide debate in regards to the swelling ranks of aged drivers on Japan’s roads. After the occasion, the variety of previous individuals opting to park their wheels for good soared. According to the National Police Agency, 350,428 individuals 75 or over returned their driver’s licenses in 2019, the best on report.
“Young people tell us seniors to return our driver’s licenses, but they aren’t around,” says Hideaki Fukushima, 90, whose spouse returned her personal license across the time of the accident. The couple’s youngsters reside in Nagoya, a two-hour drive away. In Takamori the place they reside, a small city in Japan’s central mountainous space, trains operated by Central Japan Railway Co. solely come about as soon as an hour. “There’s nothing you can do without a car,” Fukushima says.
Last 12 months, Toyota upgraded its Safety Sense providing. The expertise is designed to stop or mitigate frontal collisions in addition to preserve drivers inside their lane. By utilizing high-resolution cameras on the windscreen and bumper-mounted radars, it might probably detect oncoming vehicles or pedestrians — and even bicycles in daylight — and provides audible and visible alerts. If drivers fail to reply, computerized braking could also be deployed. The new software program additionally has intersection performance to assist detect oncoming obstacles if a automotive is making a flip from a stationary place.
Other Toyota Safety Sense options embody the correction of unintentional lane departures, computerized toggling between excessive and low-beam at night time relying on surrounding site visitors, and the detection of slower-moving vehicles forward on a freeway and computerized upkeep of a pre-set distance. Road-sign help expertise detects cease and pace indicators as they’re handed and shows a dashboard alert in case drivers have missed them themselves.
“A society in which the elderly can drive safely is crucial for their active social participation and healthier, fuller lives,” Toyota stated. “Our ultimate goal is, of course, to have zero casualties from traffic accidents.”
Subaru Corp.’s aspirations are related; it desires to get rid of all deadly accidents by 2030. Like a number of different automakers, it’s utilizing stereo cameras, which have two or extra lenses with a separate picture sensor for every, offering the flexibility to seize three-dimensional photographs. Dubbed EyeSight, the expertise seems forward and alerts drivers to any hazard. Subaru says Eyesight-equipped automobiles are concerned in 61% fewer accidents and 85% fewer rear-end crashes. Pedestrian-related accidents are lowered by 35%.
“It would be impossible to eradicate all fatal accidents without utilizing artificial intelligence,” says Subaru’s Eiji Shibata, who oversees the event of EyeSight. To attain its bold goal, Subaru plans to mix its stereo cameras with AI, assigning which means to every object and making an attempt to precisely infer threat.
That’s not with out its challenges, in response to Shibata. “It’s a technologically tough area,” he says. Stereo cameras are tougher to put in in mass produced vehicles, partly as a result of they convey extra data than different sensors and require extra sophisticated back-end assist. “Equipping the technology in cars that people ordinarily use is a huge task.”

An upgraded EyeSight X that makes use of autonomous expertise debuted in August within the second technology of the Subaru Levorg. The mannequin, which went on sale in Japan in November, has 360-degree sensing and like Toyota’s upgraded tech, has an intersection help perform that may autonomously steer vehicles away from an impending collision. Using EyeSight X, automobiles may even change lanes on their very own and decelerate for toll cubicles.
Nissan has an identical providing known as ProPilot that it expects to have in not less than 20 fashions in 20 markets globally by the top of 2023.
Takuya Matsunaga, who misplaced his spouse and youngster within the 2019 accident, admits it’s a superb begin however provides that sellers, when promoting vehicles, ought to stress these applied sciences aren’t failsafe. “Anyone can cause an accident,” he says.
Matsunaga has change into a member of Aino Kai, a assist group for bereaved households from site visitors collisions. Aino Kai additionally performs a lobbying position, urging authorities officers to develop public transport networks in regional facilities.

“I don’t want to see divisions like the young and the elderly hating each other,” Matsunaga says. “We need to think about the people who are suffering: the elderly in rural areas.”