Shocking Video of the “Moment of Accident” that Killed Two Taxis on the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway Raises Questions about the “Structural Problems” of the Taxi Industry.
The windshield was wrecked, the hood was severely damaged, and the surrounding area was littered with vehicle parts and pieces of metal from the tunnel that had been peeled off in the collision.
At around 7 p.m. on May 11, a cab overturned in the Tamagawa Tunnel on the Bayshore Route of the Metropolitan Expressway. Two people, the driver and a passenger, were killed in the accident. A reporter for a national newspaper explained the accident.
The taxi hit a curb in the tunnel and collided with a wall. The impact caused the cab to spin several times. Since the driver had no noticeable external injuries, it is believed that he died of illness rather than an accident. The deceased passenger was a VIP, Ichiro Matsuo, 61, president of Idemitsu Tanker, a subsidiary of Idemitsu Kosan, and the incident attracted a great deal of attention.”
FRIDAY Digital obtained a video of the accident from a source in the cab industry.
The video shows that the cab in motion suddenly lost control and crashed vigorously into a curb. A large number of vehicles were passing near the area where the cab overturned, and it is fortunate that the accident did not lead to secondary damage. One wrong move and many cars would have been involved. And the location was in a tunnel. It would have been a catastrophe.
Some in the cab industry are asking whether the accident can be dismissed as a mere fluke. A representative of a Tokyo-based cab company quietly confided, “The driver who caused the accident was healthy.
I heard that the driver who caused the accident had high blood pressure every time he had a medical checkup. If he had died of illness while driving, there is a strong possibility that he had a myocardial infarction or a cerebral infarction. The impact of this accident on the industry has been significant, and there are whispers that it may lead to changes in laws regarding driver health care.”
Why were drivers with health concerns left unchecked? The representative of this cab company explains, “The background is the recent driver shortage.
