Japan Police Launch Intensive Crackdown on Tailgating

June 1, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese police on Friday launched an intensive crackdown on tailgating on expressways across the country.

In the week-long campaign through Thursday, police will clamp down on malicious and dangerous acts, such as approaching other moving vehicles from behind and provoking their drivers. They will also hand out educational fliers at rest areas.

Unmarked police cars will be deployed to watch out for dangerous acts. Some prefectural police departments will fly helicopters to watch expressways from above.

Tailgating emerged as a serious social issue in Japan in June last year, when a couple died as dangerous acts by another car's driver caused their car to be hit by a truck on the Tomei Expressway in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.

The accident prompted the National Police Agency to issue in January this year a directive calling on police departments nationwide to apply not only the road traffic law but the penal code, and other laws and regulations in investigating tailgating and other forms of dangerous driving.

In cases where drivers cause bodily injury and vehicle damage as a result of dangerous driving practices or resulting incidents, the directive says that their driving license should be suspended for 30 to 180 days, regardless of accumulated penalty points.

In January-March, Japanese police dealt with 1,955 cases in which drivers failed to keep a safe distance from vehicles traveling in front of them on expressways, up by 542 from a year before, according to the NPA.

The number of license suspensions due to tailgating came to 18 in January-April alone, a much higher rate than 23 in total in the four years through 2017. Jiji Press