Pedestrian injuries, deaths highest among 7-year-old school starters

Wow. I guess it's not surprising, but it is in contrast to whole idea of Japan being so safe for children to walk to school on their own. Unlike in my home country, parents aren't allowed to drive their children to school, and this obviously exposes them to more risk, especially as the roads often don't have pavements.

But I love the fact that children are free to walk to school - it is great.

One idea would to have timer activated flashing signals on roads when school kids are coming or going.

But when you dont have a pedestrian space, elderly drivers and speeding motorists , you are really up against it.

The cars are going too fast, the drivers aren't paying attention, and a lot of the school routes I have seen are chosen with no consideration of that. Bad results will follow.

Not surprising really. Most Japanese children, especially boys have everything done for them by their mothers so when the first time of even limited independence comes, they are clueless.

The police should patrol more diligently during certain times of the day, and school zones need to be clearly established and patrolled by the police, and probably also by community members. Drivers need to slow down where kids are walking, and to stop at crosswalks. and people (especially grade school students) on bicycles need to understand that someone riding a bicycle is closer legally to being the driver of a car, and is not just a fast pedestrian.

No surprise here. As long as Japanese city planners prioritize cars over humans, nothing will change.

"Parents should identify dangerous areas on school routes before their children start school and remind them to take care,"

Unless my kids' school was a complete outlier, this already happens. Japanese schools are notorious for roping parents into PTA organizations. A lot of what PTAs do is a waste of time, but one valuable thing they do relates to "kotsu anzen", the kids getting to and from school safely. Parents will take time off work and accompany the kids and do test walks beforehand. The start of the school year usually has "shuudan toukou" where kids walk to school in organized groups, often accompanied at first by a parent or guardian.

For an official to suggest parents are not identifying dangerous areas on school routes before their children start school and not reminding them to care is braindead and actually quite insulting. The official sounds completely out of touch and is merely shifting the blame onto parents.

Not surprised.

I walk with my child to and from school, and usually there are a bunch of other kids as well.

There are two pathways, one is along side a very busy main road and the other, back roads among the houses.

The main road is actually a lot "safer" even though there are a lot more cars.

The back roads, way more dangerous. So many jackholes (usually old men) driving F1 fast among the curvy, narrow roads. They definitely aren't paying attention. On top of the younger kids are not paying attention. That's just danger waiting to happen.

Mr Kipling - don’t blame the victims. Also, were the cyclists who died wearing helmets?

Vigilante parents with eggs for the speeding drivers on narrow roads.

Children typically walk to school in groups, but this isn't always helpful as we've seen many incidents of drivers plowing into the entire group in one go.

Was surprised by this.

Not surprised that it happens, but surprised that there has been no significant campaign focusing on this, backed up by the shocking facts -

Elementary school kids - 1,875 injuries or deaths

High School kids (1st&2nd year) - 17,141 injuries or deaths (2,556 serious/fatal)

These figures indicate that many of the accidents are not reported very widely in the media. Why?

Local elementary school kids in my neighbourhood must use designated routes to and from school and most of the intersections are always manned by volunteer "safety guides", usually retired folks or housewives. It's not common to see kids walking on obvious non-designated streets.

This is the norm across my city.

Perhaps that's why it's rare to hear of serious accidents and fatalities in my area.

Whenever people bring up that tired old cultural meme that "Japan is safe for kids because they walk home alone," and I chuckle and try to explain why it's not as safe as they might think, they usually get defensive.

Kids in Japan face various dangers not common in other developed nations, with the lack of space and barriers between traffic and pedestrians being one of them.

Mr Kipling - don’t blame the victims. Also, were the cyclists who died wearing helmets?

Not blaming the kids but their mothers who think that by doing everything for them is being a good parent are wrong.

Helmets? Who cares if they had flimsy foam and plastic feel-good fashion on their heads? Not going to make a great difference.

in the morning the police should patrol the area where they have to cross to go home where it might be dangerous so they can lessen up on hit and run, and in the evening' after school, where I live in Trinidad and Tobago the police cording off the area' so at a pacific time in the day, and what I notice is it doesn't has any traffic' and the parent's should make sure that whenever the kids are outside playing outdoors they should have supervision like elder person!