As the aging of the Japanese population accelerated more rapidly than other countries, it is estimated one out of four people would be over 65 years old by 2015. It is urgently needed to establish infrastructures to support coming real aging society. Moreover, "normalization" of society has been strongly demanded where physically or mentally challenged people can lead normal life and participate in activities like other people without disabilities. Although the police, as a traffic controller, install traffic signals for visually-challenged and other people vulnerable to road traffic, there are still many traffic accidents involving old or physically challenged people. It is one of the priority issues to prevent accidents involving these vulnerable people and secure their safety. Under these circumstances, as part of the "Aruite Kuraseru Machizukuri" (development of cities friendly to pedestrians) plan proposed by the national government, the police developed a Pedestrian Information and Communication System to support the mobility of the people vulnerable to road traffic in the city, and operates the system in 20 model cities throughout Japan as trial implementation. The outline of the system and issues to be solved for successful full-scale implementation of the system in the future will be described in the following sections by taking the case of Tokyo Metropolitan as an example.
Samenvatting