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New bill: bicycles only on sidewalks?

I've taken my time in writing this, because it seems to be a sore point for a lot of riders out there. But here are my views:
Firstly, everybody agrees that the bill is "illogical", "stupid", "daft" and "unnecessary", as well of a whole heap of other less politically correct descriptions. And I'm with all of you on that one.
However, I can say that I'm NOT 100% against it either.
The main reason is… "The Mamai-Chari"!
I've ridden on most roads around this country, fairly comfortably. I've been surrounded by "good drivers", "bad drivers", "trucks", "tour buses" and "taxis".
And I can live with them all – That I'm still alive is testament to that!
But, if this bill doesn't get passed, and things swing the other way, where the NPA decides to say, "OK! Let's kick all bicycles onto the road with the cars", the absolute last thing I want to do, is "SHARE THE ROAD WITH A F#@KING MAMA-CHARI!!!!"
Also, as was mentioned in a previous post, the police over here will turn a blind-eye!
They are extremely ineffectual at stopping what "the majority" are doing.
It almost happened to me in Kyushu, but after finding out the current laws, the policeman himself, was breaking the law in telling me to ride on the sidewalk.

IF I was asked to come up with a solution for the whole problem, it would be this!
Split the bill in two:
Riders WEARING helmets must use the road!
Riders WITHOUT helmets must use the sidewalk!
That includes those daft-arsed bicycle messengers that I see everyday riding through the middle of Tokyo without helmets (and without lights at night – in dark clothing – and some of them on single/fixed gear bikes, and no brakes). IDIOTS!

The majority of mama-chari riders on the sidewalk never wear a helmet, so the sidewalk is where they should stay – usually they are only travelling less than 3km from their homes to the shop and back.
Seriously, I don't want to see them on the road.

And finally, if this idiotic bill IS actually passed, I will only have one thing to say to every policeman who tries to stop me… "Catch me if you can, Mutha-Fu@ka!"
I've never heard of anyone being deported for riding a bicycle on the road in any country.
Let them do as they will, and let us just keep riding – as we will! T

as a cyclist new to Japan and new to road cycling, I have to agree. Mama Chari riders nearly kill me on a daily basis. I had one yesterday that forced me off the path (I was sidewalk riding, not much choice though with my route) and into the rocks. Luckily, since I used to MTB in Texas, I jumped from the rocky shoulder off the fairly high curb and back onto the road and didn't fall over.

Guess what the chari-rider was doing, when I looked back?
TALKING ON HER PHONE.
as if driving a car and telephoning wasn't enough, she was having a full out conversation.
If my phone rings, I stop.


Road bikes are for the road, hence the name. What they should do is restrict ROAD bikes to the road. =)
 
as a cyclist new to Japan and new to road cycling, I have to agree. Mama Chari riders nearly kill me on a daily basis. I had one yesterday that forced me off the path (I was sidewalk riding, not much choice though with my route) and into the rocks. Luckily, since I used to MTB in Texas, I jumped from the rocky shoulder off the fairly high curb and back onto the road and didn't fall over.

Guess what the chari-rider was doing, when I looked back?
TALKING ON HER PHONE.
as if driving a car and telephoning wasn't enough, she was having a full out conversation.
If my phone rings, I stop.





Road bikes are for the road, hence the name. What they should do is restrict ROAD bikes to the road. =)


I agree with you, it would be best if road bikes were on the road and Mama charis etc were elsewhere. This makes sense but it does not make legal sense to discrimate between different types of bicycle. From a rider's point of view it is clear enough, but i am afraid this law is all bicycles or none, not in between.

What we should be aiming for is bicycles lanes, not something in between. If we have bicycle lanes, then we are safer and we have some legal recourse if anything happens. And of course this encourages people to cycle rather than use the car and this is the most important point.
 
Additional Note and correction to Mr. Takachiho's message

There is correction on the message I posted last week. Please read the additional note. I apologize for your inconvinience.- ILT:warau:


Additional Note:
Some people pointed out that part of my message, which "expanding Automobile corporations' and car drivers' benefit." may be misunderstood that the industry actually taking force to pressure. Certainly, there is not such thing.

I accept that this sentence is inappropriate, thus I corrected it to "expanding car drivers' benefit."

My intention is to say that Automobile production is Japan's key industry, and there is an atmosphere at this circumstance what is to be afraid of hurting growth of the industry which contributing for recovering Japan's economic deficit.

It is needles to say that this is not translator's fault. It is my original text's deficient.
Your understanding is appreciated.
 
Is there any news on the issue? Apparently, the bill has been passed as expected and will come into force as of April (or so Shusuke-san from my LBS has told me).
 
Is there any news on the issue? Apparently, the bill has been passed as expected and will come into force as of April (or so Shusuke-san from my LBS has told me).

that's quite lame...
a huge step backwards, too.

Tokyodamagereport.com said:
PARTIAL TAXONOMY OF FUCKED UP TOKYO WALKERS

---for eventual use in 'frogger-like ' video game ---

BLUFFERS --- usually (for some reason) young women, who operate on this principle: 'as long as we both pretend I didn 't see you, it 's ok if I cut you off or force you off the road. ' Even if you are barreling towards them fast on a bike, they will stare at a point just above and to the left of your head and continue walking as if there was no oncoming traffic.

BLURTERS--- people in a hurry (often deliverymen) who just walk out the door of a building and into the sidewalk. No one has told them that, just because the sidewalk was super crowded the last 1,000 times, that it might also be crowded NOW. Blurters are apt to appear at any time, at any place, going at full velocity even as they exit the building.

CELLIES --- people talking on mobile phones (who may or may not be also pushing babies or riding bikes) ...they are prone to be totally oblivious to their surroundings and make sudden unpredictable stops or turns.

CONFUSED SOULS --- people (usually small-town hicks or dumb gaijin confused by tokyo 's utter absence of street signs or numbers) that suddenly stop dead in their tracks in the middle of a busy sidewalk. Or maybe they suddenly realize they are going the wrong way so they do a u=turn right into you.

DRIFTERS --- people walking alone, who --- without using any sort of mirror or periscope --- seem to know you are behind them and closing fast. They also use their ESP powers to divine which side you intend to pass them on. Then they -- slowly slowly --- drift to that side so there is just one inch too little for you to pass. If you try to pass on the other side, they will JUST HAPPEN to start drifting to that side, too.

DRUNKS --- some of the worst, especially since they usually appear in groups. Drunks are oblivious to oncoming pedestrians, and prone to wildly swerve this way and that. in the game the drunks shouldn 't even appear until after the Baloon Level, they 're so hard. Some say that the best way to avoid hitting drunks is to be drunk yourself, since drunks very rarely run over one another, just innocent people.

KEISATSUKAN --- cops. You can 't do anything remotely interesting within 10 meters of them.

OBAASANS --- grannies. At least they 're not prone to sudden stops and sudden turns. They don 't do ANYTHING suddenly. These slow obstacles tend to drift into the very center of the sidewalk because they are either oblivious, or they have a Confucian belief that age entitles them to respect.

OTHER OBSTACLES: parked bicycles, random bundles of trash thrown in the street, and the worst: huge pallets of merchandise which store-owners leave on the sidewalk while they take all day to load them into the store. These invariably occur right at the same time as WALLS, CONFUSED SOULS, or SQUEAKERS.

The dreaded SLOW MOTION CRUNCH. This is the most perplexing of tokyo 's street hazards. On an otherwise empty street, any 4 people walking at totally different speeds, will tend to converge on the same point, forming a human wall, JUST AS YOU CONVERGE ON THAT POINT ALSO. you can see this coming from a mile away but, as if in a dream, there is nothing you can do to stop it. arrrrhhh!!!

SQUEAKERS --- fools on bikes on the sidewalk that don 't oil the brakes. Their hideous squeaking deafens you and causes the screen of the game to go blank for a second or two, during which time, god only knows who you will hit.

SPAZZES --- this is a 'real life ' video game. Meaning, you can 't go all GRAND THEFT AUTO on people. You can 't hit them, you 'll go to jail. your only defense on the road is a tiny little CLOWN HORN. Usually, this will cause people to try to get out of your way, if it 's not crowded. But the SPAZZES ---typically LOST SOULS, OBAASANS, or CELLIES ---the SPAZZES are in such a world of their own, that the CLOWN HORN has the opposite effect: they just spin around and go 'guh------ ' and flail left and right until they are re-orientated into consensus reality. During their spaz phase they are much MORE likely to hit you than to get out of your way. and you never know who might be a secret spaz. . ..

TOUTS --- people passing out tissue paper, flyers for karaoke, or repeated offers of 'massage ' not only clog the street, but also the 'massage ' ladies sometimes follow you like little lampreys. If lampreys could have herpes. They are tenacious and require some effort to shake off.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS: when the light turns green, it unleashes a wave of slow-moving fools who block traffic . . . even a minute AFTER the light turns green, the human wave is still going strong, causing congestion 50 meters up the street from the intersection.

WALLS - usually groups of grannies, salarimen, or tourists. People whose mission is to walk side by side and see if they can block off the entire sidewalk. Naturally they are walking extra slow because they are mainly concentrating on their amazingly witty conversation. WALLS are exceptionally exasperating if there are only 2 or 3 people but they STILL manage to block the whole sidewalk just through (one assumes) years of special-ops training and misanthropy.
http://www.hellodamage.com/tdr/archive/BIZZLE/walkers.htm
 
I went to the study about the new law held by KCA(Kanagawa Cycling Association) on Feb. 17th.

The point was "nothing decided yet". Yes, the bill will be (or has been?) passed in the end of Feb. or start of Mar., but the appliance of the law is not decided. The police is very confusing now because of resistance by many cyclists (not mama-chari riders).

In the time they(Police) started to make this bill, their basic idea was "bicycle should be on a sidewalk". But now they change their idea to "bicycle should be on road".
KCA said we could do nothing any more, but Police were now thinking the appliance. We just wait the conclusion.
When I will get a new info, I will wirte here.
 
The point was "nothing decided yet". Yes, the bill will be (or has been?) passed in the end of Feb. or start of Mar., but the appliance of the law is not decided. The police is very confusing now because of resistance by many cyclists (not mama-chari riders).

Thanks for the update, Sora-san! Resistance pays off. :)

"Il faut se revolter!" (Albert Camus)
 
I used the article below in class last week and thought of posting it here. Nothing really new, but perhaps interesting. :)


Cycling on sidewalks

By Alice Gordenker

Dear Alice,

I was more than a little shocked, upon moving to Japan last year, to see people riding bicycles on sidewalks. Back in Arizona, in the United States, sidewalks are for pedestrians, and it's illegal to ride a bike on one. Each time I ride my bike in Tokyo I wonder if I'm breaking the law. A friend told me it's OK to cycle on either the road or the sidewalk, but another said riding on the sidewalk is only permitted where there are signs that say so. I don't think I've seen such a sign and am not sure I'd recognize one if I did. What the heck are the "rules of the road?" (Or should I say "sidewalk?")

Mark J., Tokyo


ek20070123wha.jpg


Dear Mark,

Your second friend is correct. Sort of. Officially, cycling is permitted on sidewalks only where there is a sign that says it's OK, and you could be cautioned or ticketed by the police for riding on a sidewalk anywhere else. Unofficially, the situation is more complex. You're unlikely to get in trouble with the police for riding a bicycle on any sidewalk in Japan, but it could depend on how you're riding and the discretion of the officer who sees you. How's that for a definitive answer?

There is indeed a sign that permits bicycles on sidewalks, but I'm not surprised you're unfamiliar with it. I've been biking around Tokyo every day for six years, but until I got your question I had never noticed one. Known (to an official few) by the unwieldy moniker of jitensha oyobi hokosha senyo doro hyoshiki (bicycle- and pedestrian-use only road sign), it's a blue circle with a silhouette of an adult man walking with a child, and below and to their right, a bicycle.

Until about 1970, when these signs first started appearing, it wasn't permitted to ride on sidewalks at all. But the rapid increase in the number of automobiles during the first postwar decades forced bicyclists up onto the sidewalks for sheer safety. Traffic was chaotic, and there were few of the safeguards we take for granted today, like guardrails and pedestrian lights. Readers who were in Japan in the '60s and '70s may remember the term kotsu senso (traffic war), coined when traffic fatalities first exceeded the number of Japanese who were killed in the Sino-Japanese war. Dangerous traffic became a social issue, and one strategy to reduce deaths was to change the law to allow bicycles on designated sidewalks.

The trouble with that is that pedestrians and bicycles move at different speeds, and forcing them to share the same space increases the likelihood that they'll crash into each other. In 2005, there were 2,435 collisions between bicycles and pedestrians in Japan that were serious enough to be reported to the police. In six of those accidents there was a fatality.

Other countries have reduced traffic fatalities by providing separate space for motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians, but Japan has been slow to adopt the idea of dedicated bicycle lanes, partially because of a lack of space. Not surprisingly, riding a bicycle in Japan is a lot more dangerous than in other developed countries. According to data from the International Road Traffic and Accident Database, more people die on bicycles in Japan than in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands put together. Japan also has far more cycling fatalities than the U.S., despite having less than half as many people.

The National Police Agency recently held a symposium on how to make cycling safer. The attitude of the police representatives, according to one participant, was that bicycles should be moved off the roads completely, even if they've got no other place to go but straight into pedestrians' paths. This is one reason why I say you're unlikely to get stopped by the police for riding on a sidewalk, even where it isn't permitted. They like you there. Another reason is that all the police officers I spoke to assured me they look the other way unless the cyclist causes an accident or is doing something else illegal.

That's a good reason to learn the other rules concerning bicycles. Japanese law defines a bicycle as a conveyance for one person, although an adult is allowed to carry one child up to the age of 6, as long as the child is in a seat designed for the purpose. Which means all those moms who ferry two kids at once are breaking the law. So are the high school students and lovey-dovey couples who engage in flagrant futari nori unten (two people on one bike).

You'd never know it from casual observation on a rainy day, but kasasashi unten (riding with an open umbrella) is also against the law in Japan. So is doing anything that impairs your ability to operate the bicycle safely, including talking on a mobile phone. But except for occasional crackdowns on riding at night without a light, the police rarely go after cyclists. They're certainly not likely to chase after a mama chari (mommy bike) because there are two kids aboard.

However, the law against inshu unten (driving under the influence of alcohol) applies to bicycles too, and while rare, there have been arrests for drunk riding. So it's a good idea to walk your bike home after hitting the bottle. Just be sure to stay on the sidewalk, and watch out for plastered pedestrians!


Source: Japan Times
 
... and let's not forget about those other cyclist out there who think they can ride side-by-side-by-side down the sidewalk. I still have some aching joints and a nice scar from when two guys swerved out from behind their buddies just as I was about to go by them. I also know all too well about the idiots bolting out of stores and shops, and the old ladies and old men who swerve from side to side on their bikes as you try to overtake them. I have had people look right in my direction and must have seen me coming and still do not have the courtesy to move to one side of the sidewalk or just get the hell out of the way. I usually only ride my mtn. bike on the side walks to the trails on the high traffic roads but the road bike always rides on the roads. I tend to always meet those darn truck drivers who want to see just how close they can possible get to you when they pass. There's not much you can do against a big ass Hino dump truck! I wish Japan would implement cycle lanes or seperate paved trails next to main/high traffic roads like in European countries. I know there is not much room here but I think if they put some thought into it some conclusion could be reached that does not require riders to use the sidewalks. Just my $0.02..:beer2:

Dave:rescue:
 
this is quite a basic question, but do they have the equivalent of cycling proficiency tests in Japan? I had to take such a test when I was an old boy otherwise my parents wouldn't have allowed me to get a bmx. Many of the things I learnt have stuck with me and seeing people on these mama chariots really makes me wonder if people have ever been trained to be observant of their surroundings and stop and look when turning into a road (I've seen housewives with kids on the bike (without helmets) turn directly into the road without looking. To be honest, I'm not surprised that the incident rate for cycle related accidents is higher than the US, even though population size is 50%.
 
this is quite a basic question, but do they have the equivalent of cycling proficiency tests in Japan? I had to take such a test when I was an old boy otherwise my parents wouldn't have allowed me to get a bmx. Many of the things I learnt have stuck with me and seeing people on these mama chariots really makes me wonder if people have ever been trained to be observant of their surroundings and stop and look when turning into a road (I've seen housewives with kids on the bike (without helmets) turn directly into the road without looking. To be honest, I'm not surprised that the incident rate for cycle related accidents is higher than the US, even though population size is 50%.


I think most elementary schools (4th graders) have to do a test. They usually have a half day and go to a local community center (there is a traffic park specifically for this in my old home town) where they do a course and get a certificate/license. Then they forget everything by the next day.

My kids did it.
 
driving/riding tests...

hehehe my wife has her drivers license but that doesn't meen she can drive! I love her but it stresses me when she has to drive my car!

Dave
 
Wow, all I can do is laugh about this. This has to be the most absurd law I have ever heard about. I can just see what the future brings...no bicycles within city limits for safety concerns as a result of increased congestion on sidewalks. Moreover, what additional constraints will be enforced ... walking you bike across the crosswalk?

I would agree with a previous member that Japan should look to better improve the infrastructure to accommodate cyclists. Heck, if they can install amazing cell-phone networks and forge ahead with advances in cellular technoligies, offer incredible broadband services, create possibly one of the best public transportation systems in the world, then incorporating bike lanes on the roads should be an easy task for them.

Of course the USA is not the greatest example of affording bicycle friendly roads for the avid cyclist. Instead, we are forced to contend with unruly drivers who will always win out as a result of the gross tonnage factor. If I remember correctly does not Belgium have one of the most bicycle friendly road networks? Maybe Japan could use Belgium (or Wallone and Flanders if it decides to split) as a shining example.


James
 
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