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Social experiment on traffic safety on schoolroutesOHASHI Sachiko, Senior Researcher (Dr. Eng.)ONIZUKA Daisuke, Guest Research Engineer
KIMURA Yasushi, Research Engineer
YABU Masayuki, HeadAdvanced Road Design and Safety Division, Road Department(Key words) School routes, Traffic safety, Social experiment
1. Introduction
Traffic accidents involving children walking
between their home and their school continue tooccur , so traffic safety countermeasures for schoolroutes are a pressing challenge.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure,
Transport and Tourism, and the National Police
Agency prepared Emergency Joint Inspection
Procedures for School Routes in May 2012 and haveasked local government to implement this manual. InMay 2013, the 2 ministries and 1 agency jointly
announced a notification concerning future initiatives
in response to the results of the emergency joint
inspections, and in December, issued the notification,Promotion of Continuous and Effective Initiatives toEnsure Traffic Safety on School Routes, and areaggressively promoting its application.
The NILIM was already conducting research on
traffic safety measures for residential roads, and aspart of this research, from November to December
2013, in cooperation with Tsukuba City, which wasstudying specific traffic safety measures for schoolroutes, it carried out a social experiment on publicroads concerning traffic safety measures for schoolroutes.
This report introduces an outline of this socialexperiment.
2. Outline of the social experiment
The social experiment was done by installing speed
reduction structures etc. on school routes andverifying their effectiveness with the cooperation ofthe Tsukuba Central Police Station and Ninomiya
Elementary School.
The route included a narrow section with width ofabout 4.0m and without walking space for children
and a straight road section with 6.0m – 7.0m width
where vehicles travel at relatively high speed. On thisroute, traffic from outside the district is particularly
heavy in the mornings and evenings, and ensuringsafety of children when commuting to and fromschool is a challenge.

3. Traffic safety measures tested
During the social experiment, the route was divided
into 3 sections according to road conditions to study
the traffic safety measures.

In the first section, a narrow road shared byautomobiles and pedestrians, the roadside strips werewiden and colored in order to ensure space wherepedestrians can walk safely.
In the second section, which is a straight wide road,vehicles travel at high speed and pedestrians feelendangered, so humps and chicanes were installed toencourage drivers to reduce their speed. In light of theviews expressed by some that this part was used as ashort-cut of an arterial road, a bottleneck was installedat its entrance as a through traffic countermeasure.
To clarify the effectiveness of these measures, thespeed of vehicles and locations they traveled wereobserved by video cameras. And to understand how
safe and secure the users feel, a questionnaire surveyof drivers, children commuting to school, and local
residents was carried out.
4. Conclusions
The results will be announced as necessary, but theresults of the questionnaire survey of the elementary
school children show that about 80% of themanswered that they felt safer than before thecountermeasures were taken.
The NILIM will apply the results of the social
experimenttoresearchon traffic
safetycountermeasures for residential roads throughout
Japan, and Tsukuba City will use them to implement

traffic safety countermeasure projects on school routes
serving Ninomiya Elementary School.
[Sources]
NILIM web page: http://www.nilim.go.jp/lab/gdg/index.htm- 2 -