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The story
It has come to light that, at a signal-less intersection on “Gakuen Chuo Dori” near Hitotsubashi Gakuen Station on the Seibu Railway Tamako Line in Kodaira City, Tokyo, drivers were mistakenly ticketed for “running a red light” — despite there being no stop obligation at that intersection — in 63 cases between May 2024 and July 2026. The Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission is correcting the violation points, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) plans to refund the fines collected. At the site, just beyond the signal-less Intersection A lies a railway crossing and a signaled Intersection B, and it appears the traffic light there was installed in a position that made it easy to mistake for the signal governing Intersection A. In a 5ch thread, users debated the layout of the traffic light, stop line, and railway crossing based on photos posted from the scene.
It has emerged that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department mistakenly ticketed drivers at an intersection in Kodaira City, Tokyo, for violating the Road Traffic Act by allegedly running a red light — even though there was no stop obligation at that location to begin with.
The enforcement mistakes numbered 63 cases between May 2024 and July 2026, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission has corrected the violation points. The Tokyo MPD will refund the fines paid by the drivers affected.
The mistaken enforcement took place on “Gakuen Chuo Dori,” a road near the north exit of Hitotsubashi Gakuen Station on the Seibu Railway Tamako Line (1-chome, Gakuen Higashi-cho, Kodaira City, Tokyo). Heading from east to west toward the rail line, there is “Intersection A,” with a “stop line” painted just before its crosswalk. Just beyond Intersection A lies a railway crossing.
Source: imgur.com / Original article here
What people said
The Tokyo Police crack down on cars like crazy but won't touch illegal mopeds
Every weekend, tons of illegal mopeds pile up on the sidewalk near Omotesando on Route 246
There's a patrol car ticketing cars in the next lane over, but they never touch the illegal mopeds swarming Omotesando
Must be an order from the top brass at the Tokyo Police not to crack down on illegal mopeds
It says they're correcting the points too
Hard to follow from the text alone, but it makes sense once you see the photo
https://www.asahicom.jp/imgopt/img/38b1527082/hd640/AS20261013003834.jpg
Even with the photo I don't get it
Is the near-side signal just dark/unlit?
There's no traffic light at the near intersection
I mean, the placement of the light here is just terrible
It's actually the signal for the railway crossing and Intersection B beyond it, but to also cover the crossing
it's installed before the crossing rather than inside Intersection B itself
That's exactly why it ends up looking like it belongs to the near-side Intersection A
There are two traffic lights though, see Re: #10
That diagram isn't accurate — in the photo from Re: #10 the stop line is behind the traffic light, which is extremely confusing. Honestly, you'd need to see police internal documents to know for sure which intersection that signal actually belongs to
www.asahicom.jp/imgopt/img/921beb1bf7/hd640/AS20261013004168.jpg
A T-junction is still an intersection
Even without a traffic light, it's still an intersection
For what it's worth, pedestrians have right of way at intersections
Also, overtaking is banned starting 30m before any intersection — including overtaking pedestrians and cyclists
Well, leaving a gap out of courtesy is a different story
Legally, no, that's not okay
Because if you follow the Road Traffic Act properly, that situation shouldn't arise in the first place
There's only about one car's length (roughly 5m) between Intersection A and the crossing
So if there's already a car ahead, the car behind it must not enter the intersection
(Since the lead car has to stop at the crossing, the car behind would inevitably end up stopped inside the intersection)
Ah I see, just like in the illustration — there's only room for one car
In that case you've got no choice but to wait in front of the crosswalk until the car ahead clears out
Intersections without a signal aren't covered by Article 50, Paragraph 1 (the law against entering and blocking an intersection)
If you know in advance you'll be in the way, leaving the space open is just a matter of courtesy, not a legal requirement
There's a diamond-shaped road marking before the crosswalk, so that confirms this crosswalk has no signal
The diamond mark before a railway crossing
is a road marking (painted on the pavement) indicating that a "railway crossing ahead" warning sign is nearby.
In Japan, a diamond (◇) shape is sometimes painted on the road surface before a railway crossing. It serves as advance notice meaning "there's a railway crossing ahead, please be careful." It's placed there to prompt drivers to slow down and stay alert early.
Wouldn't it be on the far side rather than the near side?
Since that's the opposite lane
That diamond mark is actually after the crossing, not before it
> The enforcement mistakes numbered 63 cases from May 2024 to July 2026
What about before that period, I wonder?
That traffic light really doesn't look newly installed
It's been there way longer than that
Maybe the officers doing the enforcement just changed
Officer A: "Found ourselves a nice little sucker spot!"
Officer B: "Ha ha, jackpot, jackpot!"
Ticketed driver: "Uh, that's actually wrong, why don't you double-check?"
Captain: "Yep, it's wrong. Write up an incident report."
Officers A & B: "Turns out WE were the suckers…"
You just follow whatever color the signal's showing
Right, right, that's what I learned too
I mean, otherwise you'd have to stop again right before the tracks, and that'd cause massive backups
That's only true when the light is green
This signal cycles flashing red → yellow → red, so you do have to stop
This one's on flashing red, so following the signal means you have to stop
Actually, if you don't stop and the car ahead of you is waiting to turn left at Intersection B because of pedestrians, you'll end up stopped right on the crossing
Did the officers just mistakenly believe you always have to stop at a stop line regardless of whether there's a sign or signal?
Yes
That's basically the story
They probably just mistook Intersection B's signal for Intersection A's, plain and simple
That narrow side street coming in from the left has sidewalk-style paving blocks
Can cars actually even pull out from there?
Intersection A
35.72304, 139.48012
It's outside the road's outer edge line, so it's probably treated as a sidewalk
Looking at Street View, there's no diamond mark warning you this crosswalk even exists
Even though the crosswalk and stop line are freshly painted and crystal clear from a recent repaving
Looks like even the local authorities were treating this as a signaled crosswalk (lol)
Better get that diamond painted on, stat!
Actually, the diamond mark was there after all (lol)
Even intersections without a traffic light don't always have the diamond mark, so it's hard to say either way…
The Tokyo Police really ought to provide clearer guidance on this
Whenever I travel somewhere I don't normally go, I keep running into what are basically unofficial local rules
Wouldn't it be the National Police Agency (the body that oversees all prefectural police, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Police) that issues that kind of guidance, not the Tokyo Police?
There really are differences between prefectures
When I renewed my license, they punched a hole in my current one and told me to keep using that until the new one arrived
Later, before the new license came, I needed to open some kind of account and sent a photo of it as ID
and they told me it was no good because it had a hole punched in it
No way, I said — until the new license arrives and I swap it in, the hole-punched one IS the valid license
Whoever came up with the rule that a hole-punched license is invalid is an idiot who doesn't know what they're talking about
I laid into them pretty hard and argued until they gave in and accepted it
Later I found out that very few prefectures actually treat a hole-punched license as valid
So… I'm kind of regretting how hard I went off on them (lol)
Someone who felt something was off probably reported it — maybe just 1 in 1,000 people would, but still
Maybe one of the people who got ticketed worked in law enforcement or the legal field?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Traffic lights are normally installed within or immediately adjacent to the intersection they govern, but the Intersection A at issue here is a signal-less T-junction, and the actual traffic light was installed even farther ahead, just before the railway crossing and Intersection B. It appears to have been placed there to also account for the crossing, but as the exchanges based on on-site photos make clear, the layout was confusing enough that drivers could easily mistake it for the signal governing the near-side intersection. The article doesn’t explain exactly how the Tokyo Police came to notice the mistake, and the thread floated the guess that someone with legal or police knowledge might have been among those ticketed — though that remains pure speculation. At the core of this case is the fact that at spots with complicated rules — like intersections without signals, or the stop obligations tied to railway crossings — misunderstandings can happen not just among ordinary drivers but among the officers enforcing the law. More than just a simple “police mistake,” it’s a case that points to a mismatch between intersection design and how the law gets applied in practice.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “No Stop Obligation, Yet Ticketed for “Running a Red Light”? Tokyo Police Made 63 Enforcement Mistakes — Intersection in Kodaira, Tokyo.”
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