A man who was so angry at a drunk driver that he attacked the driver with a knife… “You get hit, you get hit back,” a childish “cycle of violence”.

Stabbed the other driver in the back.

He was so angry at the driver that he stabbed the other driver in the face.

That’s what the man who tried to kill the other driver by stabbing him in the face said during an interrogation.

On the night of April 29, the Noda Police Station in Chiba Prefecture caught Junichi Inoue, 44, of unknown occupation and address, red-handed on suspicion of murder.

At around 8:30 p.m. on the evening of April 29, a pileup involving three cars occurred on National Route 16 in Noda City. A mini freight car driven by the suspect, Inoue, rear-ended a mini passenger car in front of it. The minicar then rear-ended the car in front of it. The accident itself did not seem to be serious.

However, when the driver of the minicar, a man in his 50s, tried to get out of the car, the suspect Inoue suddenly stabbed him in the cheek with a blade like a pointed knife. The man pushed the suspect Inoue down on the street and three people, including a woman he knew, seized him. The man was stabbed in the right cheek and was injured for two weeks.

Inoue denied some of the charges, saying that he did not intend to kill the man. As for the accident, he stated, ‘I was angry because he was driving in a rash, so I hit him from behind, and he rear-ended me.

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. on May 1, Inoue emerged from the Noda Police Station in the pouring rain. When a police officer held an umbrella over him, Inoue glanced at us for a moment through his long, shaggy bangs, and then walked straight ahead.

Angry that he had been yelled at, Inoue not only yelled back at the other driver and caused a rear-end collision, but also attacked him with a knife. The suspect’s claim that he was “hit” by the driver is only his own, and it is unclear whether or not the victim actually did so. However, was it something that made him that upset?

The Road Traffic Law was revised in June 2008, and the offense of “distracted driving” was introduced. This was triggered by a series of incidents and accidents involving distracted driving that became a social problem in the latter half of the 1960s. The “Tomei Expressway fatal accident” that occurred in June 2005 in Oimachi, Kanagawa Prefecture, had a particularly large impact on society.

A construction worker (26 at the time) became angry when a self-employed man (45 at the time) warned him that he had parked outside the designated area at a parking area, and chased after the van in which the man, his wife, and two daughters were riding. The man’s car repeatedly interfered with the man’s driving by cutting in front of the wagon and suddenly decelerating, and finally stopped the car and assaulted the man. As the man was leaving, a large trailer crashed into the van, killing the man and his wife, and seriously injuring his two daughters and himself.

It was difficult to apply the term “dangerous driving.”

The perpetrator, a man, was subsequently charged with dangerous driving causing death or injury. It is true that the man stopped the victim’s car on the road, which resulted in the accident, but it was a third party’s car that actually caused the accident. From the beginning, the application of the charge of manslaughter by dangerous driving was considered difficult, and the Kanagawa Prefectural Police had once given up on the idea.

The trial turned on whether the man’s actions constituted “dangerous driving. As a result, the court found that the man was not guilty of causing death or bodily injury while stopped, but was guilty of causing death or bodily injury while driving, including obstructing the path of another vehicle. After a trial including a remand hearing, the man was sentenced to 18 years in prison in January ’26.

The “Joban Expressway Roadside Driving Incident” that took place in Moriya City, Ibaraki Prefecture, in August 2007 also attracted public attention. A company executive (44 at the time) stopped the victim’s car on the highway and assaulted him, causing him to be injured for a week.

The entire assault was caught on the drive recorder of the victim’s car. The scene was broadcast on TV and caused a great sensation. As the car and his appearance were shown on TV, the extra charges were revealed one after another. The man was charged with coercion and assault and sentenced to two years and six months in prison, with a suspended sentence of four years with probation.

The “driving disorder offense” was established as a measure to control such malicious “distracted driving.” In addition to “failure to maintain a safe distance between vehicles,” the law stipulates that 10 acts, including abrupt changes of course and sudden braking, will be enforced as “obstructive driving. Violations carry a penalty of up to three years in jail or a fine of up to 500,000 yen. Violators of the law will face up to three years in jail or a fine of up to 500,000 yen, and those who “cause significant danger,” such as stopping on an expressway, will face up to five years in jail or a fine of up to 1,000,000 yen. In either case, the driver’s license will be revoked at once.

So, has the number of distracted driving cases decreased since 2008?

The number of cases where the crime of distracted driving was actually applied remained at around 100 per year from 2008 to 2011, and detailed statistics for 2012 and beyond are not available. However, as far as arrests for failure to maintain a safe distance on expressways are concerned, there were 13,797 arrests in 2007, the year in which distracted driving became a social problem, but the number has been decreasing since 2008, with only 4,713 arrests in 2012. Looking at this figure alone, it can be said that the number of cases has decreased.

However, according to a survey released by Zurich Insurance in June last year, 34.5% of respondents said they had experienced an incident of being hit by a distracted driver within the past five years. The number is decreasing, but it has not completely disappeared,” said a traffic journalist.

Many of the accidents and incidents involving distracted driving are motivated by the childish motive of “I got hit, so I hit back. Some people believe that this is because the driver gains a certain sense of omnipotence by driving a car larger than his or her own body at speeds that humans cannot match. However, it is outrageous for a suspect like Inoue not only to retaliate but also to take out a knife.

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