Japan cuts speed limits to 30km/h on narrow city streets to protect pedestrians

On the narrow residential streets where daily life unfolds — where children walk to school and elderly neighbours move between home and shop — Japan has chosen to slow down. Beginning this week, a new 30km/h limit replaces the former 60km/h on roughly 870,000 kilometres of unmarked roads, covering nearly 70 percent of the country's general road network. The decision is rooted in a simple but sobering arithmetic: the difference between a 1 percent and a 17 percent chance of death is measured in the speed of a passing car. In slowing its streets, Japan is asking its cities to remember what they