Can you believe the driver got a traffic ticket for this?
Neither can millions of Japanese people online.
Let’s take a look at the original event, the public’s response, and what happened
just the other day, to close it all off.
Legally, in Japan, drivers must yield to pedestrians at crosswalks.
But what would you do if a pedestrian gave you the “go ahead” motion?
It’s not even a question, right?
You'd go!
Recently, however, quite a few people in Japan have been getting ticketed for it.
This incident was the final straw that, with nice and clear dashcam footage, set the internet
ablaze.
Our driver sees the bus ahead moving and starts following, but upon seeing a pedestrian coming,
stops.
Then, another pedestrian coming from the left gives a hand sign telling the driver to go
head.
The driver motions, “no, you go”, but the pedestrian again insists, and the driver
proceeds through.
The driver is soonafter stopped by the police.
Here’s the driver speaking through
a voice changer.
The news report on
this has some other pedestrian interviews about it.
Even according to the Japanese Law, at a crosswalk, a car must come to a complete stop, and must
not obstruct the passage of pedestrians.
But the law does not clearly say anything about going before the pedestrian.
Here’s some of the comments on the video.
Note that the driver intended to contest the penalty.
Instead of this, can we crack down on drivers that blow straight through crosswalks while
pedestrians are there?
Come on, win for us driver!
To help make motorists aware of what they should be careful of, and to help pedestrians
know what to do if they find themselves in this situation.
We don’t need cops like this.
I want the driver to win!
I don’t have a license, so this is purely the opinion of a pedestrian, but at times
when, due to an injury or something, I’m unable to walk quickly, I always let cars
go first.
Sometimes, pedestrians want cars to go first, so I hope the police can be flexible.
I saw someone reply to this on Twitter, saying “From now on, let’s all let police cars
go first then” lol
YouTube User Kim Jong Un says: “There was no disturbance to the pedestrian – instead
of doing this kind of stuff, they should to crack down on more dangerous behaviour.”
At this point, a YouTuber lawyer guy named Fujiyoshi gets involved.
6 months ago, because of a sudden rise in the issue of similar traffic tickets in Yamanashi
prefecture, he uploaded a video where he called the Yamanashi Prefecture’s Police Headquarters
and asked them about it.
The officer said generally people would not be penalized for such a thing.
Then, he calls the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, who tell him that they would not generally
be looking to penalize that kind of stuff.
It’s funny that in this call, they have this interaction
But the event we’re talking about today actually did take place in Tokyo.
On July 7, a video was uploaded with the driver, anonymous, in the middle, and Mr. Lawyer Fujiyoshi
on the left, calling the Police Station and talking to the exact officer himself to confirm
the facts of the case.
It’s quite long, and they go in circles
a lot,
but Fujiyoshi goes pretty hard on the cop, who doesn’t seem to understand the law
in
the first place.
The conversation gets QUITE INTENSE.
Despite this, he refuses to watch the dashcam footage, and refuses to withdraw the offense.
Fujiyoshi says he will send the footage to the police chief.
Just yesterday, while I’ve been making this video, there was an update.
Good thing I procrastinate so much, I guess?
On Twitter, Mr. Fujiyoshi, the lawyer, announced that the traffic violation was withdrawn.
We went to the police station.
They gave us a sincere apology.
The gist of what we learned was:
In this case, there was no violation They believe that it should not be a violation
if the driver is waved through after coming to a complete stop
These officers will be thoroughly instructed on what to do in the future.
They will check the dashcam in the future There are not many examples of violations
being withdrawn like this.
Hopefully this can serve as precedent in the future for other drivers in the future.
At the end of every video, I tell a personal story about my experiences in Japan.
One time, when my best friend flew to visit me in Japan, my Japanese friends decided to
drive us from Wakayama to Kyoto in a 6-seater van to show my us a nice tourist experience.
It was about a 90 minute drive on the highway; our driver was speeding a bit.
On the freeway, there’s these toll gates called ETC gates, most cars have a little
chip thing that automatically pays and makes the gates open as you approach.
You’re supposed to slow down to 20km/h before going through, but I guess we didn’t?
I think there was some sort of delay, or glitch or something, but we barely avoided colliding
straight with it.
It was so scary, but a few weeks later, I learned that one of our friends in the back
seat had a very illegal knife on him or something, so the stakes were way higher than even I
knew about.
Thanks for watching!
It feels like this happens every time I make a video, but this video did start as “Japanese
Dashcams” with like 2 or 3 different clips but this one started becoming really interesting
so I focused on it.
If you’d like to see shorter-form dashcam content in the future, please let me know
in the comments.
Oh yeah, subscribe or whatever.
I’m a quarter of the way to my silver play button!