### d. Development, Commercialization, and Promotion of Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV)

The development, commercialization, and promotion of Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV) is being promoted under the cooperation of industry, academia and government and ASV technology that is already commercialized such as collision damage reduction brakes are being widely promoted and efforts are underway for the commercialization of safe driving support systems that use communication such as vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems and pedestrian-to-vehicle communication systems. As part of this effort, the Tokyo 2013 ITS World Congress was held in October 2013 and a public road demo was done for the advanced highway safety system using vehicle-to-vehicle communication and pedestrian-to-vehicle communication.

### e. Providing Safety Information Through Automobile Assessment

In order to promote the selection of safe automobiles and child seats by users and the development of safer automobiles, the evaluation results of the safety of cars is published. In fiscal year 2013, 14 automobile types and nine child seat types were newly evaluated.

### f. Swift and Steady Implementation of Automobile Recalls and Informing Users and Others

For the swift and steady implementation of automobile recalls, efforts are made to gather information from automobile manufacturers and users and during the audit of recall operations by automobile manufacturers confirmation and guidance is carried out and for automobiles with concerns for safety and environmental performance, the National Traffic Safety and Environment Laboratory (Incorporated Administrative Agency) will conduct technical verifications using the current model. Also, to strengthen the gathering of defect information from users, public awareness campaigns for the “automobile defect information hotline” (www.mlit.go.jp/RJ/) were actively carried out.

In addition, the information collected by MLIT including malfunctions, accidents, and fires are made public and information is provided to users regarding matters that require the attention of users or details necessary for the appropriate usage or maintenance and management or to take appropriate measures when malfunctions occur. Press releases and other measures were used to especially raise user and public awareness for “pumping the brakes for trucks equipped with air brakes are dangerous” and “ensuring the functionality and knowledge regarding the use of vehicular emergency escape hammers”.

Also, in fiscal year 2013 the number of recalls submitted was 303 and the number of cars affected was 7,978,639.

### g. Sophistication of Vehicle Inspections

In order to prevent illegal secondary modifications $ ^{Note} $ and the early detection of vehicular malfunctions, information technology is being utilized to make vehicle inspections more sophisticated.

## (8) Protecting Victims with the Automobile Liability Security System

The automobile liability security system, implements various victim relief measure services such as insurance payments of mandatory vehicle liability insurance, relief (governmental indemnity services) for victims of hit-and-run and uninsured car accidents, and payments for caretaker fees and establishment of care facilities for those with heavy residual disabilities.