24% of Japan traffic lights aging, further raising safety fears

Around 24 percent of Japan's traffic lights in fiscal 2023 were recognized as being past their replacement date, the National Police Agency said Wednesday, raising fears of serious accidents from signals malfunctioning or collapsing onto the road.The life span of the controllers is generally 19 years and police data showed that in fiscal 2023, 49,684 traffic lights, or 24.3 percent of the total, were past the replacement threshold.This marks the fourth straight year the rate of non-updated traffic signals has stayed in the 24 percent range.The probability of a traffic signal working incorre…READ FULL ARTICLE