Drivers on residential roads in Japan have been forced to take their foot off the accelerator, after the speed limit was slashed from 60km/h (37mph) to 30km/h in an attempt to reduce deaths and injuries among pedestrians on narrow urban streets.

The new limit, which went into effect on Tuesday, applies to residential roads with no centre line or maximum speed signs, media reports said.

Narrow roads with no centre lines or pavements are a common sight in crowded Japanese cities, with data indicating that children and older people are at particular risk of being involved in a fatal or serious accident.

The measures apply to about 870,000km of roads that are less than 5.5 metres wide and do not have centre lines or median strips, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. They account for about 70% of the country’s general roads, the newspaper said.

Authorities hopes the restrictions will address concerns that residential areas are not experiencing the same improvements in safety seen on larger roads.

While the overall number of deaths in traffic accidents is in decline – falling to a record low of 2,457 last year – those involving children and older people on residential roads has remained steady at about 300 a year since 2021, and rose for the first time in three years in 2025, according to the national police agency.

The introduction in 2011 of “zone 30” areas on a limited number of residential streets and along school routes resulted in a 30% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries, the Mainichi said.

Police agency data show that the mortality rate among pedestrians is less than 1% in accidents involving vehicles traveling at or below 30km/h, with the rate rising to 2.7% at speeds of 30-40km/h, and to 17.4% at 50-60km/h.

“We ask drivers to recognise that they need to take particular care on roads shared by vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists,” the police agency’s commissioner general, Yoshinobu Kusunoki, told reporters this week.