Elderly woman drives at speed on sidewalk in Japan 【Video】

The scene was captured on video until she disappeared from view.

There’s been a lot of news in Japan recently about elderly drivers posing a danger on the nation’s roads. With car crashes involving older drivers on the increase, local police departments have even been offering senior citizens the chance to “graduate from driving” with certificates and additional discounts on public transport in order to prevent accidents.

One driver who might want to consider taking up this offer is this obaachan, or elderly lady, who was spotted driving not on the road but on the footpath in Japan a few days ago. Apparently oblivious to what she was doing, and driving at speed as if she were in a proper lane, it’s lucky nobody was hurt while this video was being taken.

Take a look at the video below.

Twitter user @aaats04, who took the video and shared it online, can be heard saying “I wonder who’s driving?” and as they pull up alongside the car, he yells out “obaachan!”, the Japanese word for “grandmother”, which is also used for elderly woman in general. At this point, we catch a glimpse of the driver, who appears to be an older woman in a hat peering over the steering wheel.  

Though @aaats04 and his friends can be heard laughing at the unusual sight, this really was no laughing matter. Not only was the driver posing a danger to herself and the person beside her in the passenger seat, she was also a threat to surrounding traffic, and any pedestrians on the path, who would’ve found themselves directly in the path of an oncoming car traveling at speed. 

After the video was shared on Twitter, though, it became clear that this wasn’t the only dangerous granny on the roads, as this clip of an obaachan on a scooter emerged, showing her riding on the wrong side of the road.

The two videos, filmed within days of each other, garnered a huge amount of attention online, with people leaving comments like:

“I feel bad for laughing – this is actually really dangerous.”
“This is the reason why we need autonomous vehicles on the roads.”
“I wonder how the driver of the car got on the path in the first place. And how did she get off it in the end?”
“It might look funny, but imagine what would happen to her and an innocent family if she ran someone over on the footpath.”
“I hope she realised her mistake and doesn’t do it again.”
“I’ve reported the car’s license plate number to police so they can talk to the driver.”

This last comment actually received a lot of praise from other people online, who said it was actually in the woman’s best interests to have the police talk to her. Hopefully they’ll be able to find out what happened and determine whether or not she is fit to drive on the roads, for both her safety and the safety of others.

Source, featured image: Twitter/@aaats04



Credit:
at 21:14

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