In an accident where a visually impaired man fell from a platform and died at a station on the Tobu Tojo Line in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, Tobu Railway thoroughly spoke to visually impaired people and turned the edge of the platform red for the time being. The railway have decided to take measures such as calling attention to people with impaired vision.
Tokyo Metro announced on the 18th that it has developed a system that guides the visually impaired people safely in a station by reading a QR code on the Braille block with the camera of the smartphone and guiding the direction and distance by voice. It will be introduced at 5 stations in Tokyo from the 27th.
The Osaka prefectural police department plans to introduce a program allowing elderly drivers to experience what life without a car would be like before they actually surrender their licenses. The program will encourage elderly drivers to take public transportation or ride bicycles instead of driving a car. They will be allowed to drive while participating in the program.
A survey conducted by the Japanese newspaper The Mainichi Shimbun that more than 80% of Japan’s accessible pedestrian signals, traffic lights that also produce sounds to let pedestrians with visual impairments know when it’s safe to cross the road, have their noise-making function muted for at least part of the day, the newspaper’s survey of the country’s 47 prefectural police forces has found.
Alarmed at the increasing number of stations without workers in his prefecture, causing inconvenience and possible safety concerns, three disabled people came together to file a lawsuit against Kyushu Railway at the Oita District Court in September.
On Dec. 6, six members of the National Council of Visual Disabled in Japan and two supporters visited the scene of the accident at Toyocho Station on the Tokyo Metro Co.’s Tozai Line in the capital’s Koto Ward. The deceased is Yukio Koike, 68, a massage therapist from Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward.
Construction work to install platform doors at Toyocho station, which is on the on the Tokyo Metro Tozai Line began this month, but was not yet completed. The work is scheduled to be completed by the end of next month.
Around 12:45 on the afternoon of 29th November, a man fell from his platform at Toyocho Station on the Tokyo Metro Tozai Line in Toyo 4, Koto-ku, Tokyo, and collided with a train (10-car train) from Nakano to Nishi-Funabashi. The man, believed to be visually impaired in his 60s living in Edogawa Ward, was taken to a hospital, but was soon confirmed dead. A platform door was installed at the station to prevent it from falling, but the door remained open before the start of operation.
The guidance states, amongst other issues that when it is necessary to transfer a wheelchair user from a seat to their wheelchair, that the hands of the personnel dong so will be disinfected.
Mitsunobu Yoshimoto had a disability certificate for an eye disease, and Yoshimoto’s white cane has been found on the scene. There is no barrier on the platform at the station to prevent someone from falling, and the camera that was installed showed that Yoshimoto stepped off and fell onto the track. The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the cause of Mr. Yoshimoto’s fall.
