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Roads with rumble strips in Hokkaido
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Installation length on national highways in Hokkaido
Rumble strips, first installed in 2003, were received favorably by many road administrators.
The Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau started to adopt it actively as a measure against head-on collisions.
No complaints about noise have been reported, and installation length on national highways in Hokkaido was 140.9 km on 21 roads at the close of fiscal 2004.

A rumble strip prevents an accident.
Click here for movie.


The movie was taken by a 24-hour monitoring camera installed on the road, and it clearly shows a compact car immediately returning to its lane, thanks to the rumble strip, after straying onto the oncoming lane. A large vehicle was coming from the other direction, which could have caused a serious accident. There were several other cases recorded where the rumble strip enabled a vehicle crossing over the centerline to return to its lane, although there was no oncoming traffic those times.

Installation (2002.7 - 2003.11)
After the first installation by the Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau on National Highway 5 in Yakumo Town in July 2002, the rumble strip installation length reached about 39 km on 24 sections by November 2003, a period of one year and four months.

On these 24 sections, 42 head-on collisions had taken place in the two years before installation. This was reduced to 19 head-on collisions in the two years after installation a 55% reduction.

The data are based on figures as of Dec. 31, 2004. The number of accidents before the installation is figures for the two years before the installation at respective sections. The number of accidents after the installation is an estimate, because a full two years had not passed after installation.