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The story
Following an April amendment to the Road Traffic Act that requires drivers to maintain a set lateral distance when overtaking cyclists, reports have revealed that on Tokyo’s narrower streets, keeping that distance often means crossing the yellow center line that prohibits overtaking. In response, the Metropolitan Police Department has announced plans to repaint roughly half of Tokyo’s yellow center lines white. Reactions on 5ch split between criticism of officials for not foreseeing this contradiction before the law changed, suggestions that it would be simpler to just rewrite the rule’s wording than repaint the lines, and debate over whether cars or bicycles should be the ones adjusting speed and position.
Bicycle-Overtaking “New Rule” Sparks Wave of Traffic Violations — Metropolitan Police to Repaint Tokyo’s Yellow Center Lines “White” [Spotlight]
Alongside this April’s amendment to the Road Traffic Act, which set rules for how cars overtake bicycles, a Spotlight investigative report has found that a separate traffic violation is occurring: cars are crossing yellow center lines — which prohibit crossing over — in order to keep their distance from cyclists. Following this report, it has newly come to light that the Metropolitan Police Department plans to repaint roughly half of the yellow center lines in Tokyo as “white lines.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Crossing the line has always been against the rules, you know.
Cars belong on the road. There's no way they can ride on the sidewalk.
You knew it too, right?
Apparently it was too much for Japan's bureaucracy to figure out.
Yeah, we knew.
This isn't some "only an expert could've seen it coming" thing — even ordinary people were worried about this.
Couldn't the car just be the one to wait instead?
Probably.
There's no way they'd write a law without noticing something even users of the Nanademo Jikkyo ("G") board — a 5ch forum known for casual chatter — could spot right away. This was likely a cover for some other agenda.
Like funneling work to road construction companies.
Seriously, this.
Fire the incompetents who start with appearances and just burn through the budget.
Re: #81
That's obviously a bad idea — it would let people cross even in spots where crossing is genuinely dangerous.
Can't do that — then there'd be no way to skim a cut off the top (a jab at kickbacks in public works spending).
Sure, but in practice nobody was ever cited for it, and in most cases people just drove straight through and overtook anyway.
Isn't the issue that they can't do that anymore?
Exactly.
That's basically what a narrow road means.
There's no reason to just leave something dangerous as is.
If you don't think breaking the rule is a big deal, go ahead and do it yourself, I guess?
If you actually follow the law, on Tokyo's surface streets a car has to slow to under 5 km/h just because a bike is nearby — do you even get that?
LOL, a bike going 5 km/h.
It's just like accidents or traffic jams — if that's the situation, that's how you have to drive, lol.
Why are you acting surprised by something so obvious, lol.
And then a head-on collision with oncoming traffic?
Road bikes and the like could be restricted to dedicated facilities only.
Sidewalks are narrow, and pedestrians aren't required to stick to any particular position or direction, so that'd be pretty tough.
It's far simpler for cars to just match the bike's speed.
There are tons of granny bikes (mamachari) doing about 5 km/h — so what's the deal with that?
Actually, aren't those the overwhelming majority?
I doubt half of them even hit 10 km/h.
Go get a license and actually drive sometime.
This is embarrassing.
We're talking about Tokyo surface streets with yellow center lines, right?
If you see them everywhere, tell me exactly where.
It might seem strange if you assume "His Majesty the Car" should always get to cruise along happily at full speed,
but as a rule for safely sharing limited road space, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
Apparently with a white solid line you're allowed to cross it if it's to get around an obstacle or a bicycle.
Basically both prohibit crossing.
White means no crossing, period.
Yellow specifically prohibits crossing to overtake, but things like right turns are fine.
Maybe the car crawling along behind the bike should get arrested for tailgating/road rage instead.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The April amendment made it mandatory for cars to keep a lateral distance from cyclists, but many stretches of road in Tokyo are narrow, so keeping that distance often means crossing over the yellow center line into the opposite lane. Yellow lines were originally drawn to prohibit crossing for overtaking in sections with poor visibility of oncoming traffic, so the Metropolitan Police Department appears to have chosen to repaint them white in order to bring the lines in line with the new rule. In the thread, criticism of officials for not anticipating this contradiction before the law took effect, questions about efficiency — wouldn’t it be enough to just rewrite what the lines mean? — and a more fundamental disagreement over whether cars or bicycles should be the ones to yield speed or position all came up at once, turning this into less of a simple “repainting” story and more a debate about how hard it is to design traffic rules in the first place.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread ‘Police: “Sorry! We can’t overtake bicycles if the center line is yellow. We’re having them all repainted white! Really, so sorry!”‘.
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