Kick scooter rider referred to prosecutors on dangerous driving charge in Japan first

Dec 17, 2023

May 20, 2023 (Mainichi Japan)

TOKYO -- In a Japan first, police in Tokyo on May 18 sent public prosecutors documents on an electric kick scooter rider suspected of drinking and driving resulting in injury, accusing him of dangerous driving.

Investigators at the Metropolitan Police Department's Meguro Police Station allege that the 26-year-old suspect was inebriated and incapable of driving normally when he got on his kick scooter in Tokyo's Meguro Ward on Feb. 20, 2023, and subsequently injured a woman who was on the small two-wheeled vehicle with him.

Police stated that the man has admitted to the allegations, and quoted him as saying, "I knew it was wrong to drink and then get on the kick scooter."

According to the police station, the man rode his kick scooter into a roadside curb and toppled over. The woman with him, who is in her 30s, sustained a traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage and other injuries requiring about five weeks to heal in the crash. Both the suspect and the woman had apparently been drinking before getting on the kick scooter, and neither was wearing a helmet.

(Japanese original by Maki Kihara, Tokyo City News Department)