Driving here, an exercise in frustration.

Mr Man · 2 Apr 2007

Okay, I don't know how many of you drive here, but if you do, you'll know how ridiculous it can get. I think they are totally over the top on the amount of traffic lights they put up at every little goat track and tambo access road, when common sense would suffice. Often traffic jams occur for no other reason than the bloody lights are causing them!! I heard, but have not had it confirmed, that retired cops go into the traffic light business and basically have that whole deal bagged for themselves.
Does anyone know if it's true or not?

Also, what do you all think of the snails pace 40kph speed limit on many of the country roads here. If you've ever actually driven at the legal speed, you've probably caused a traffic jam of your own!! LOL

pipokun · 2 Apr 2007

The trafic jam at Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo must be the rip-off, though I heard it is a great tourist attraction.

JimmySeal · 3 Apr 2007

Not only in Japan, I think a lot of traffic could be relieved considerably by adhering to this one simple rule:

The right lane is for passing ONLY.

Grandpa Frank · 3 Apr 2007

JimmySeal said:
Not only in Japan, I think a lot of traffic could be relieved considerably by adhering to this one simple rule:

The right lane is for passing ONLY.

God, not in the US please, LOL.

Uncle Frank

JimmySeal · 3 Apr 2007

Uncle Frank said:
God, not in the US please, LOL.

Uncle Frank

Very funny. Reverse right and left where necessary.

leonmarino · 3 Apr 2007

JimmySeal said:
Very funny. Reverse right and left where necessary.

Hm? So you're saying that the left lane (for us Euro-citizens and US-ers) should be for passing only? In Holland (and I think the whole of Europe) you're only supposed to use the left lane for passing. True, there are people that constantly drive on the left lane, but these are most of the time people who are passing others all the time!!

The main cause of traffic jams is that eventually people have to get off the highway and into towns. That slowing down, and the fact that cars on a highway with three of four lanes are crammed into one exit lane causes traffic jams.. Also, if people would keep more distance between each other, that would alleviate the problem considerably. I might be no reliable source but I did some interesting case research on this many moons ago when I was still studying technical mathematics.

Mike Cash · 3 Apr 2007

Mr Man said:
Okay, I don't know how many of you drive here....

I do it for a living. And lately I spend 14-20 hours per day, six days a week at it.

Mikawa Ossan · 3 Apr 2007

Mr Man said:
Often traffic jams occur for no other reason than the bloody lights are causing them!!

This I cannot agree with with the conditions where I currently live, but here's a little annecdote that helps your point. I once decided to use the Kanmon tunnel between Kyusyu and Honshu instead of the usual expressway. Mostly due to the ubiquitous red light, my regular run of 10-20 minutes took hours and hours to complete.

I heard, but have not had it confirmed, that retired cops go into the traffic light business and basically have that whole deal bagged for themselves.
Does anyone know if it's true or not?

My gut reaction is that this is a wive's tale, but you never know...

Also, what do you all think of the snails pace 40kph speed limit on many of the country roads here. If you've ever actually driven at the legal speed, you've probably caused a traffic jam of your own!! LOL

Here's another little story.

Back in the day when Koko Ichibanya still had the deal where your dinner would be free if you could eat the full kilo of curry rice, some buddies and I decided to take them up on their challenge. I got pretty far, but I just couldn't finish it for the life of me.

Anyway, I was stuffed. When I drove the usual 40 minute trek home, I felt that if I drove too fast, I would have a mess in the car, so I drove the speed limit all the way. Yeah, it took a long time, but more importantly, the string of cars behind me got longer and longer. I started to feel bad for them, but not bad enough to risk speeding up!

So I did what I often saw other slow cars on the country roads do: I pulled over to the side of the road and let everyone pass me.

Mr Man · 5 Apr 2007

Mike Cash said:
I do it for a living. And lately I spend 14-20 hours per day, six days a week at it.

Wow that's quite a lot of driving. What are you doing? Long haul trucking or something?

Mike Cash · 5 Apr 2007

Intermodal containers to/from Gunma and the ports at Tokyo and Yokohama, mainly.

JimmySeal · 5 Apr 2007

leonmarino said:
True, there are people that constantly drive on the left lane, but these are most of the time people who are passing others all the time!!

I'd say that about 30% of the time this isn't true. A lot of the time people plop themselves in the inside lane because they think they're the fastest thing on the road and jam up the works while people have to sit behind them or weave around them. It only takes a few of these people to really slow down traffic. Of course rush-hour traffic is unavoidable, but stuff like this makes it worse.

There have been times when I've driven late at night with almost nobody on the road and had a pair of cars in front of me with the one in the right (inside) lane driving considerably slower than the one in the other lane. This means the only way to get by them is to pass them illegally on the left.

Mars Man · 12 Apr 2007

My hat's off to those who earn a living by driving here in Japan !!
I had been tossing the idea of opening a similar thread to this one some time back in January...and never got around to it. Thanks for doing it for me, Mr Man san.

Now here in my area some of the main concerns would be traffic lights, yes, but more so the fact that Matsumoto is a castle town...and the web of maze-like one-way streets and such just went from foot paths, to modern paved roads pretty much as they were. We also have a lot of mountains to wind around.

Now one thing that gets under my skin, is what I would call simply poor road planning. One thing that pops up in my mind first is the sharpness of the angles of the curbs--for example going from a fairly normal two-way street onto a smaller one or a parking lot. If more the angle (or degrees of radius?) were less sharp, one could pull off without having to slow down drastically; the traffic flow would remain fairly stable.

As it is now, especially with the average driver, you almost have to come to a full stop when two or three cars behind that driver who is pulling off the road. BOY does that get to me !!! Also, when pulling onto the main road, the front right corner of your car has to go into the on-coming lane, so you can't just pull onto the road without worrying about traffic from that direction too. IF only the curb were slower, so that we could pull onto the road (a left turn is what I'm talking about) without having to wait until both lanes were clear. . . it would be great !!

KirinMan · 12 Apr 2007

Now one thing that gets under my skin, is what I would call simply poor road planning.

Houses and buildings were built first then the roads later. It realy is that simple, and yet that frustrating.

GaijinPunch · 12 Apr 2007

As someone who has cycled extensively through Tokyo, been a passenger in many other countries, and was a driver for 2+ years in the absolutely worst place for driving in the states (Honolulu), I must say, a little traffic wouldn't bother me. It's not like there's less people traffic when you walk. Everything's crowded in Japan... why would the roads be any different?

*Honolulu: Traffic sucked, but the drivers were worse. Pedestrians get smacked all the time, and it's not an overpopulated area by any stretch. Nobody pays attention.

Mars Man · 12 Apr 2007

Obeika said:
Houses and buildings were built first then the roads later.

And that's the truth....as the 'little' girl used to say on Roan and Martan's Laugh In (if that's the right spelling)

I understand your point, GaijinPunch, and am not all that bent out of shape because of traffic...at least not that much; but speaking for the area I live in, I sure wish them there road planners would just do better planning.

And speaking of red lights, we do have some places where it would probably decrease carbon dioxide output at that general point by some 2 tons/day if only they'd put the lights in sync, or remove one (or two) of them. And what about stopping, looking, then if clear, turning left on red? Where I live there are a good number of bottlenecks that would practically disappear if that were accepted.

Driving here, an exercise in frustration.

Mr Man

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