sector entities to solve the problem of cars driving in the wrong-way driving on expressways, a situation that at any given time is highly likely to cause a major accident, are being studied.

## (4) Systematic Road Facilities Management to Provide Safe and Secure Road Services

Bridges under municipal management account for approximately seventy percent (480,000 bridges) of the approximately 720,000 bridges nationwide. In the United States, bridges managed at the municipal level account for no more than ten percent of the total number in existence in the country. In managing the vast majority of bridges to be found in this country, Japanese municipalities need to properly maintain, repair, and upgrade bridges under their care.

Additionally, to achieve the appropriate management of the roads, clarifying the need for inspections, creating regulations to designate roads to attract the traffic of large vehicles that impact road structures the most, and persecution of vehicles that violate limits were some of the things included in the amended Road Law that was promulgated for government ordinances. The facilities subject to renovation and repairs by the agency were defined as tunnels and bridges, and technical standards were established for the maintenance and management of roads.

A ministerial ordinance was enacted on March 31, 2014 that clarified the obligations of road administrators, such as visual inspections in close proximity of bridges and tunnels once every five years.

Having received recommendations on the full-scale implementation of measures to deal with the obsolescence of roads, as summarized by the Infrastructure Development Council’s Road Subcommittee on April 14 of the same year, we will henceforth endeavor to define maintenance cycles (clarify the obligations of road administrators) and build a framework for carrying out required actions as part of these maintenance cycles.

We have been more proactively engaged in the provision of support for measures undertaken by local governments to deal with aging road structures. This includes the steady promotion of regular inspections through the use of road maintenance councils that had been set up in all prefectures by July of the same year, the placement of batch orders of inspection operations at a local level, the provision of training for the staff members of local governments, the provision of technical support by the national government where the national government repairs on behalf of the local government based on the evaluation results by the national government officials, and the establishment of subsidy systems for large-scale repair and upgrading jobs.

In order to deal with the obsolescence of expressways, large-scale upgrading and repair projects newly outlined in operational implementation plans according to amendments to the Road Act enacted in June of the same year are systematically being advanced.

## (5) Steady implementation of the “Expressway and Chartered Bus Safety and Security Recovery Plan”

In response to the Kan-Etsu Expressway tour bus accident that occurred in April 2012, the “Expressway and Chartered Bus Safety and Security Recovery Plan” was formulated in April 2013 to transition and unify expressway tour buses into the new share-ride expressway bus and already established standards for driver replacement shifts and for the remaining measures, these have been definitely implemented in the two years between FY2013 and 2014, and the status of implementation has been followed up and its effects have been reviewed. The MLIT continues to ensure the effectiveness of each measure of this plan such as implementation of street audit and understanding of bus operators that must be continuously monitored, and promotes measures to improve the safety and regain trust of bus operations.

## (6) Promoting Safety Measures According to a Safety Plan for Commercial Vehicles

In November 2014, an interim review of a 2009 comprehensive safety plan for commercial vehicles that was formulated with the aim of halving the number of deceased persons and the number of accidents resulting in injury or death relating to the use of commercial vehicles in the decade between 2009 and 2018 was conducted. Various initiatives to further reduce accidents have been advanced to go along with new measures that have been implemented; these measures include the implementation of accident-prevention measures based on accident trends by industrial sector and key factors, the dissemination of measures to prevent accidents caused by physical changes affecting drivers, and the implementation of accident-prevention measures based on the use of survey data, accident data, and other types of pertinent information.

## (i) Establishing a Framework for Safety through the Management of Transportation Safety

In accordance with a transportation safety management program introduced in October 2006, business operators have