The driverless bus service was suspended after one of Toyota’s e-Palette autonomous electric buses hit a Paralympian, Japanese judoka Aramitsu Kitazono, who was trying to cross an intersection in the village, around 2 p.m. on Thursday.
Japanese railway operators are accelerating efforts to allow people on wheelchairs to take a train without the help of station staff members.
Members of the All Japan Council for the Visually Impaired, a group of visually impaired people, have inspected the dangers of JR Ochanomizu Station (Chiyoda Ward) and Yoyogi Station (Shibuya Ward), both of which have steps on the platform. At Ochanomizu Station, which does not have a platform door, they believe that people could fall off the platform.
Public prosecutors demanded a prison term of seven years on Thursday for a 90-year-old former senior Japanese government official over a high-profile fatal runaway car accident in Tokyo in 2019.
The edge of the platform has been raised to reduce the gap between the platform and the carriage to about three centimetres, and the sides of the platform have been fitted with rubber parts to narrow the gap between the platform and the carriage so that wheelchair tyres cannot get stuck.
The Sanyo Electric Railway has produced a series of posters to raise awareness of the behaviour of people with intellectual disabilities in stations and on trains.
Using the train in Japan is likely to cost a little bit more as Japan’s transport ministry is considering to charge more to help improve accessibility at railway stations.
In order to make it easier for people with disabilities to use the system, a council made up of 69 railway and bus operators in the Kanto region and elsewhere has announced that from the second half of next year people will be able to use Suica and PASMO to receive discounts without having to show their disability certificate.
In January of this year, a local group for visually impaired people submitted a request to Tobu Railway to strengthen measures to prevent falls after an accident in which a visually impaired man fell and died at a station in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo.
The new Tokaido Shinkansen, which will run from the 20th, will have four more seats for wheelchairs, for a total of six seats.
Barrier Free Japan