Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world and alsoone of the unusually rainiest countries with a large annual precipitationdue to the seasonal stay of a rainy front and frequent landings of typhoons. Topographically and geologically, Japan is very mountainous, with the backbone ranges spreading through the center of the archipelago, and has many major cities developed on soft alluvial plains. With all these conditions combined, natural disasters frequently occur and have serious impacts on road traffic of the country. Although the deaths by traffic accidents are recently decreasing in number, the number of the casualties and that oftraffic accidents are both increasing. Under those circumstances, responses to natural disasters and measures to ensure traffic safety are crucial for the road risk management in Japan. This paper reports the current status of Japan's road risk management by presenting the measures against roaddisasters, such as earthquake countermeasures, heavy rainfall countermeasures and tunnel disaster prevention, and road traffic safety actions. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Samenvatting