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The story
On September 1, 2026, new standards took effect setting a uniform 30 km/h speed limit on residential roads that lack a center line. Previously, roads without speed-limit signs had no legal maximum at all, meaning drivers could effectively go up to 60 km/h — but the revision now brings these narrow residential streets under regulation. On 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” (general live-discussion) board, backlash (“this is a pain for rural roads,” “it’ll take longer to get anywhere”) clashed with support (“people who drive dangerously fast are the problem,” “a reasonable standard for cutting accidents”), and the thread expanded into debate over how enforceable the rule really is and its impact on the delivery industry.
What people said
Idiots who drive over 30 on roads like that deserve to get caught.
Some roads are too fast even at 20.
Do you ever actually go outside?
The whole point of this standard is to catch those idiots.
This exactly.
The only people speeding on residential roads with no center line are the ones using them as rat-runs (shortcut routes to dodge traffic).
Bus schedules are gonna get thrown off.
Buses mostly stick to roads they already know well, so it barely matters.
No way that happens.
It's just basic math.
Why do you put a space in every single line?
It's voice input.
Right now, if you dictate while typing, random spaces just pop in all over the place.
Anyway, forget that — imagine me dictating this exact sentence out loud right now.
Scary, right? (lol)
Traffic law doesn't get enforced to the letter, so rural roads will be fine.
Nothing's changed for bikes either.
Which means the stock of whatever manufacturer supplies them to the police is going up.
You guys are hopeless if you can't see that coming.
It peaked around March, it's already dropping now.
It's barely different from before.
But rural areas are still doomed.
No way, this changes a ton.
Go 30 over the limit and it's an instant license suspension.
Way too perfectly aimed, lmao.
It wasn't a 60 km/h limit.
There was just no set speed limit, so you *could* go up to 60.
The picture in Re: #55 makes it obvious these aren't roads you can actually drive 60 on anyway.
This is why unlicensed kids shouldn't talk lol.
If the speedometer reads 60, actual speed is more like 55, so that's juuust barely in the clear.
If there's a speed trap (nezumitori, literally "mouse-catching" — slang for a police radar trap) on a road with visibility like that, you'd spot it instantly.
In reality, nobody's brave enough to actually hit 60 on a narrow road, and nobody really does.
I haven't measured it exactly, but there's a car that blazes by my house every day at a clearly insane speed.
That guy doesn't even slow down at intersections.
If this wipes out idiots like that, I'm all for it.
Just hoping it doesn't turn into a pure ticket-quota cash grab.
Guys like that won't care about this law in the first place.
It's a law that only ends up screwing over rural areas.
Same as with the bicycle helmet thing — daytime TV shows made such a fuss about it that suddenly there were tons of old guys wearing full-face helmets into convenience stores, it was a whole mess.
There are even prefectural roads so narrow two cars can't pass each other.
There simply was no speed rule until now.
Until now it was handled with signage, but that costs money, so the idea is this law handles it instead.
Residential roads in cities are mostly capped at 30-40 already.
If you didn't know that, please just hand in your license.
Delivery times will get slower too.
Trucks don't speed on residential roads to begin with.
Those contracted independent delivery drivers in kei vans have been way too out of control.
Those are exactly the ones I want this revision to crack down on properly.
Rat-run shortcuts are gonna get jammed up, so yeah, deliveries will just be late.
It's less about the suspension itself — you'll almost certainly get hit with a gross-negligence finding and brutal damages, plus a real prison sentence for dangerous driving. Your life's basically over.
If you're not even drunk but still speeding enough to hit revocation level, you're clearly a repeat offender — might as well revoke it.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
This revision concerns the legal speed limit on residential roads without a center line — the key point being that, until now, sections without speed-limit signs had no upper limit at all. As post #63 points out, it wasn’t that there “used to be a 60 km/h limit” — there simply was “no limit set,” and in many cases the road itself isn’t even built to be driven at that speed. While plenty of posts frame this as a “change for the worse” based on a misunderstanding of that distinction, there’s also persistent frustration that even a clear, straight road with good visibility gets a blanket 30 km/h limit if it lacks a center line. The thread saw voices supporting the rule’s accident-prevention aim alongside concerns about its impact on rural residential roads and the delivery industry, surfacing issues that don’t reduce to a simple for-or-against split.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Massive Facepalm] The 30 km/h Road Speed Limit ‘Bad Law’ Starts Today lol❗“
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