Charges stem from discovery of reverse-loophole following crash on Tokyo streets.
Even before the current inbound international travel boom made jackassery from foreign tourists a major topic of discourse in Japan, Tokyo’s go-kart rental companies were a divisive presence. Initially, they were largely seen as a bit of silly, quirky fun, with tour groups driving through certain neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo while cosplaying as Super Mario and other Mario Kart characters (though not with any official blessing from Nintendo). Following multiple collisions and traffic incidents caused by tourist kart renters more focused on snapping/posing for photos while behind the wheel rather than driving safely, kart rental companies’ image has sagged in the eyes of many in the general public, and now in the eyes of the law too.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police have filed charges against a kart rental company headquartered in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, stemming from events that took place last spring. In April, the company rented karts to two foreign travelers who then drove them on the streets of downtown Tokyo. One of the drivers crashed their kart, causing property damage, and when police arrived on the scene and questioned the pair, the drivers were arrested on-site for operating a vehicle on public streets without driver’s licenses.
However, there was some extra complexity to the situation. Both of the tourists have driver’s licenses in their home countries. Ordinarily that’s not enough to let you drive in Japan, though. You need either a Japanese license or an international driver’s license, the latter of which is an official document/translation issued for a fee at motor vehicle departments in one’s home country, with no test involved. But while both of the tourists who were arrested were in possession of international driver’s licenses, the problem was where they got those licenses from. The tourists had come to Japan from a country that’s not a signee to the Geneva Conventions, including the Convention on Road Traffic, and under the Japanese legal system, international driver’s licenses issued by non-signee countries are invalid in Japan.
It’s unclear whether or not the tourists were aware that their licenses weren’t valid in Japan, but the police have now filed charges against the owner of the kart rental company, asserting renting to the pair and allowing them to drive the company’s vehicles on public roads constitutes a violation of Japan’s traffic safety laws. The owner, who reportedly was aware of the invalidity of such licenses, was apparently not at the rental office at the time the tourists rented the karts, but prosecutors say he is liable for not properly instructing his staff to check for such licenses and reject rental request, and are asking for “heavy punishment” for the infraction.
Source: Asahi Shimbun via Livedoor News, Tokyo Shimbun
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