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The story
A dispute between a JAF (Japan Automobile Federation) staffer’s car, which had stopped short of a railroad crossing, and the car behind it — which allegedly closed the gap and tried to force its way past — has become a hot topic on 5ch. Police say they found no evidence of tailgating, but some posters argue the front car pulled forward just as the crossing gates were coming down, splitting opinion over which driver bears the greater fault. The debate has since spread to who would ultimately be on the hook for damages owed to the railway company.
What people said
Sounds more like he got pissed off at being stopped and decided to get out of his car and make a scene.
Is there an actual source for that?
Or is that just your personal take?
Or is he just being paranoid?
Even if he was, entering a railroad crossing while the car ahead is stopped is the abnormal move here.
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Thinking about this calmly, this is way too messed up…
Doesn't sound like a sane state of mind to be in.
Guess he never imagined the guy behind him could be that stupid.
👮 "After reviewing the dashcam footage, the car pulled forward right as the crossing gate finished coming down, so we're treating this as attempted murder."
And there's your answer.
Thanks, officer.
The real question is liability for damages to the railway company
and that share falls on whoever drove into the crossing knowing full well they'd collide with the train.
>that share falls on whoever drove into the crossing knowing full well they'd collide with the train
Wow, what beautiful Japanese (mocking how garbled/awkward that sentence reads).
Wonder how this one's gonna shake out
Watching this closely since it could set precedent for fault ratios in cases where you crash while swerving around an illegally parked car.
If you're driving normally, you don't enter a crossing when there's no room ahead of you.
Tailgating aside, riding someone's bumper into a railroad crossing isn't something a normal driver does.
If it's just a breakdown, you can steer around it or deal with it somehow, you know
Maybe not you, though.
You guys lost.
Who exactly are you even arguing with at this point?
[Q] What should I do if I'm the victim of tailgating ("aori unten")?
[A] Take refuge somewhere that seems safe and has plenty of witnesses around, like a parking lot.
JAF's own Q&A page says this, and yet a veteran staffer went and pulled a stunt this far out of line…
He probably wanted the train passengers to witness it.
Rear car gets their license revoked for obstructive driving
Yeah, this is how it ends.
Guess judgment's coming down on both of them.
Feels like we haven't actually heard much from the "victim's" side — did he actually play the victim card?
Tailgating still hasn't even been confirmed, you know.
100% on the car behind.
>100% on the car behind
What is??? (huh, come again???)
Going by traffic law alone, sure, but since he deliberately parked himself inside the crossing and held things up, both of them are getting dinged for this.
The JAF staffer also broke the rule against stopping within 10 meters of a crossing — don't just conveniently ignore that.
Front car: attempted murder charge
But damages owed to the railway: 100% on the rear car.
Yeah, that's probably how the damages side shakes out.
Hope it goes that way.
The damages claim would land on the front car too, you know.
People arguing from pure emotion with zero knowledge of the law or the rules are the scary ones.
Doesn't seem like there's solid enough grounds to state that so confidently
If anything, there's actual grounds for the "victim" to be billed for damages instead
though the railway company probably won't bother going after them.
Background and Key Points
Police found no tailgating evidence, so the JAF driver’s claim rests on the dashcam timing near the crossing gates. The thread is really wrestling with a specific legal question, and the background matters for a non-Japanese reader.
Police cannot cite drivers for tailgating (“aori unten,” codified under Japan’s 2020 anti-tailgating amendment to the Road Traffic Act) without corroborating evidence, and here they say the dashcam shows none — undercutting the JAF employee’s account rather than vindicating the driver behind him. Separately, Japan’s Road Traffic Act flatly bars entering a railroad crossing (fumikiri) unless a driver can confirm they can clear it entirely before the gates close; violating that carries its own penalty independent of who was at fault for the initial stop. JAF itself, in its own consumer-facing guidance on tailgating victims, tells drivers to flee to a safe, witnessed location like a parking lot rather than stop somewhere as exposed as a crossing — a detail posters flagged as ironic given a JAF staffer’s own alleged conduct here.
What the thread actually splits on is not whether the rear driver behaved badly, but whether liability for property damage owed to the railway company would track criminal fault at all. Several posters argue the front car could face attempted-murder-level scrutiny for deliberately trapping someone, while the rear car could still bear most or all of the railway compensation simply because entering an unclear crossing is a strict per-se violation. That gap — criminal culpability sitting with one driver while civil/damages liability sits with the other — is the crux, and it’s genuinely unsettled precedent, not something 5ch can resolve.
What outsiders likely miss: nothing here has been adjudicated. “No evidence of tailgating” is a police statement about an ongoing matter, not a court ruling, and Japanese railway operators routinely pursue full compensation from whoever entered the crossing regardless of provocation.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Who’s really at fault — the JAF staffer who stopped at the crossing, or the “victim” who closed the gap behind him?“.
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