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The story
A JAF (Japan Automobile Federation) rescue vehicle, after being tailgated, stopped just past a railroad crossing — leaving the car behind it trapped inside the crossing. The JAF employee was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. On 5ch, opinion is split between those who say “the following car shouldn’t have entered the crossing until the car ahead had cleared it” and those who say “the fault lies with the tailgater who closed the gap.”
What people said
A 52-year-old man was arrested on the 19th on suspicion of trying to kill a driver by trapping the car behind him inside a level crossing on the Tobu Urban Park Line
Someone who witnessed the incident right after it happened
Couldn't the car behind have just checked it was safe before entering the crossing?
This.
The one who was so busy tailgating that he ignored the traffic laws is the one at fault.
That's just a way to avoid an accident happening in the first place — it has nothing to do with whether the perpetrator was at fault for what actually occurred.
Probably both.
They'll probably be held jointly liable.
Guess he really was tailgating, huh.
You wouldn't normally do that.
He was definitely tailgating.
So the JAF employee isn't at fault — the idiot who "died" is.
Unfortunately, he didn't actually die.
But Mr. Kato got out of his car right after exiting the crossing and confronted the victim, who was stopped inside the crossing.
Even if they can establish he was aware he was damaging the car,
you still can't rule out the possibility that he assumed the victim himself would get out and escape (which is exactly what happened).
Is this the type who thinks getting hit by a train is no big deal???
that story does hold together to some degree.
Goes without saying what happens if you leave a car stuck on the tracks in that state, right?
"From the point in the footage where the gap between suspect Kato's car and the victim's car starts closing, it's about a one-minute drive to the crossing. Suspect Kato's parents' house sits even before the crossing at the scene, so the gap with the victim's car may have closed when he slowed down to turn off toward his parents' place."
So 400m before the scene, there was a normal amount of following distance.
> A car believed to be suspect Kato's, traveling about 400 meters before the scene.
Ten seconds later, a car believed to be the victim's can also be seen.
You see it practically every day.
The penalties are already fairly harsh — it's proving it that's hard.
he should have just called JAF.
Then they'd have come back and helped him out. (Ironic, since the perpetrator himself was a JAF employee.)
But this JAF employee knew the accident had happened and still fled home to his parents' place.
If his parents' house is just before the crossing, maybe he saw the tracks turn into a major accident scene, thought "oh no," and went home anyway.
You'd think a tailgating scumbag would just try to push the car ahead out of the way.
Doesn't a safety feature bring the car to a stop?
You can tell from the video — there's basically no following distance at all.
This guy sounds like he's got real talent for it.
It's built so it's hard to break going in, but easy to break going out.
He got out of the car because with the way blocked ahead, he thought he'd be killed if he stayed.
Only after seeing that did the JAF car move.
By then there probably wasn't time for him to get back in and move his own car.
That's true.
Everyone has a duty to avoid causing an accident, after all.
What kind of logic is that???
Are you the type who can't be satisfied unless it's entirely one side's fault?
If you're going to say that, then you absolutely can't stop inside the crossing either.
But the car ahead stopped right at the crossing exit and blocked the way out — isn't that just unavoidable?
If you're going to say that, then you shouldn't force your way forward when the way ahead is already blocked.
Situations like that can happen (breakdowns, accidents, etc.), which is exactly why the rule is: you only enter a crossing if you're sure you can make it all the way across.
Background and Key Points
JAF (Japan Automobile Federation) is a nonprofit roughly equivalent to the AAA in the US — most of its staff drive rescue vans to disabled vehicles rather than get involved in criminal cases, which is part of why an employee facing an attempted-murder charge became national news. The relevant law here isn’t just driving-school etiquette: Japan’s Road Traffic Act explicitly bars entering a railroad crossing unless the driver can be certain of clearing it entirely, and crossing gates are deliberately engineered to resist being pushed on the way in but snap easily on the way out, precisely because vehicles have historically been trapped this way. Separately, “aori unten” (malicious tailgating) was made its own criminal offense in 2020, carrying up to five years’ imprisonment and mandatory license revocation, after a viral highway case exposed how hard tailgating was to prosecute under ordinary traffic rules.
The thread’s actual fault line isn’t “was tailgating bad” — everyone agrees it was — but whether the trailing driver’s own violation (entering a crossing without a guaranteed clear path) legally or morally cancels out the JAF employee’s choice to stop and trap him there, which prosecutors read as intent to kill.
What outside readers may miss is that attempted murder in Japan doesn’t require the victim to be harmed; the charge rests on demonstrated intent, not outcome, which is why one poster had to clarify that the escape shown in dashcam footage doesn’t undercut the charge. The thread never engages with the aori unten law itself, even though it’s the more likely charge to actually stick against the trailing driver.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nanでも実況G) thread “JAF Employee: “I noticed I was being tailgated and stopped — turned out it was right after crossing the tracks” ← Well, that’s fair enough then.”
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