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The story
In the road collapse incident in Yashio City, Saitama Prefecture in January 2025, the bereaved family of the truck driver (74 at the time) who fell into the sinkhole and died has filed suit against Saitama Prefecture — which manages the sewer pipes beneath the site — at the Saitama District Court, seeking approximately ¥125 million in damages, the Tokyo Shimbun reports. On the forum thread, opinions were divided over the circumstances in which the wire snapped during the single-point lift attempt to hoist the truck out, the fact that the lawsuit targets the prefecture as sewer administrator rather than the fire department, and the basis for calculating the damages amount.
10/20 (Tue) 21:00
Tokyo Shimbun
It has come to light that the family of a male truck driver (74 at the time) who died after his truck fell into a sinkhole in a prefectural road in Yashio City, Saitama Prefecture, last January, has filed suit at the Saitama District Court against the prefecture, which manages the sewer pipes beneath the site, seeking approximately ¥125 million in damages.
Source: topics.smt.docomo.ne.jp / Original article here
What people said
I get slipping and falling, but a wire snapping like that is just not okay.
Even measured against the rules for sling rigging (tamakake), this looks like a clear win for the family.
If you actually follow the sling-rigging rules, the answer is "you're not supposed to lift it" — rigging isn't meant for dragging out something that's half-buried.
The lawsuit is against the prefecture in its capacity as sewer and road administrator, not as the fire department.
That part isn't even up for debate.
But does a 74-year-old's life really come out to ¥100 million?
The truck's value is probably factored in too — a 10-ton box truck runs about ¥20-30 million.
Was the truck his personal property? Wasn't it the company's?
Isn't that kind of thing calculated at the market value at the time?
Surely they'd have estimated the weight and built in a safety margin.
Even without degradation, wires commonly get cut by edges.
Also, lifting a load that isn't level is extremely difficult and dangerous —
it's strictly forbidden in normal sling-rigging work (because load slippage and uneven weight distribution can snap the wire and send it flying).
For the prefecture to pay damages, the executive branch has to submit a budget and get assembly approval.
The sticking point is the amount of damages —
they can't just pay whatever figure the family names, so the amount has to be settled in court first.
If I recall, the hole was right after he turned,
and it opened up just before he turned —
that's beyond what any human could reasonably predict.
Actually it was a left turn.
but for some reason the fire crew tried to lift the whole truck out instead.
That was seriously a brain-dead approach.
Exactly this.
I wonder if the driver was even conscious while they were trying to lift it.
Wasn't he probably still strapped in with his seatbelt?
Because the driver's seat was buried under the dirt and debris.
Okinawa settled out of court though, didn't it?
Firefighters are local government employees, so that's covered too.
Right, this.
If they sued over the rescue itself, they'd lose for sure.
"(He) carried out his work every day with the utmost care to avoid accidents" —
that line sounds fishy too. If he'd really been that careful, he could have stopped before falling in at that speed.
A giant hole suddenly opening up in the road is just unimaginable.
Even in Super Mario you fall into holes you can clearly see —
by the time you did a double-take, you'd already be in it.
Fire department's rescue effort rated "generally appropriate"
Yashio City, Saitama road collapse incident
Expert panel releases final report (March 24, 2026)
https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2548865
he definitely could've been saved. But while everyone was arguing about rules and procedure, it turned fatal……
The driver's seat was crushed, so he couldn't get out.
Completely useless
Dodging the hole would mean driving as if you had to avoid every puddle too — that's not realistic.
It's clearly different from an obstacle sitting out in plain sight on the road.
Background and Key Points of This Story
The Yashio City road collapse occurred in January 2025, and an expert panel’s final report in March 2026 rated the fire department’s rescue response as “generally appropriate.” This lawsuit is not about the rescue method itself, but concerns the responsibility of Saitama Prefecture as the administrator of the sewer system that caused the collapse — a distinction some commenters on the thread also pointed out. It’s also worth noting, as background on how local government works, that for a municipality to pay damages it requires budgeting and assembly approval, meaning the damages amount must be fixed through a court ruling rather than simply accepting the family’s asking price — a point touched on in the thread as well. The damages figure is believed to include the market value of the truck itself, so it would be premature to judge whether ¥125 million is excessive based on that number alone.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Yashio Road Collapse] Family of Truck Driver Sues Saitama Prefecture: “Sewer Management Was at Fault” — Seeks ¥125 Million in Damages.”
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