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.
In the service, available at Terminal One, self-driving wheelchairs take JAL flight users to boarding gates after they go through the security check. The vehicles, developed by Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture-based Whill Inc., are parked at a designated area called Whill Station. They will return to the station on their own after dropping the users.
The new guidelines will call on bullet train operators to secure a spacious area in each train where several people in wheelchairs could stay side by side.
A summary court ordered a Tokyo-based bus operator to pay 330,000 yen in compensation to a man with disabilities after a bus driver departed from a stop before he was seated, resulting in him falling over and getting injured.
The number of fatal accidents caused by drivers aged 75 or older fell to 401 in Japan in 2019, accounting for 14.4 percent of the total, slightly lower than a record high seen the previous year, police data showed Thursday.
The ministry plans to make public transportation easily accessible to those with disabilities and the elderly by having the operators of taxis, buses and trains master how to use barrier-free equipment, such as slope boards for wheelchair users. A bill to revise a law on promoting the smooth transportation of elderly and disabled people will be submitted at the ordinary session of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, to be convened Monday.
In the early morning of January 11, a 53-year-old visually impaired man fell off his platform at JR Nippori Station in Arakawa-ku, Tokyo, and was killed by a train.
The Mainichi Shimbun answers some common questions readers may have about the barriers wheelchair users can face on Japan’s shinkansen bullet train system.
A panel of experts called on Japan’s National Police Agency on Thursday to introduce a system under which elderly drivers at high risk of causing accidents need to pass a driving skills test in order to renew their licenses.
JR East hopes to make the Takanawa Gateway Station on its Yamanote Line a model for its future stations with cutting-edge technologies, but disability action groups in Japan have voiced concerns about ‘unstaffed’ stations before.
