Sacrifice of Cheap Business

As most Asian travelers do, most Japanese people feel happy to be a snow world. It has been a typical pattern for ordinary students in Tokyo to participate in midnight bus tour to ski resorts in mountain area of central Japan. For the tour to be tailored to students, price must be cheap. That sometimes causes excessive cost cut, leaving safety behind. That structural problem caused deaths of fourteen out of forty-one having boarded on the ski-tour bus on Friday.

The bus left Harajuku, Tokyo, to send 39 snow lovers to Madarao Ski Resort in Nagano on 11 p.m. on Thursday. Most passengers were groups of students who went to colleges in Tokyo area. On 1:55 of Friday, the bus tumbled down the road and crushed on trees, severely breaking the ceiling. Survivors witnessed that the driver had been driving with excessively high speed. One single line, not parallel ones, made by slipping wheels was left on the road.

The place of the accident was not on the driving plan of the tour. Two drivers were on the bus for changes in the long drive each other. It is unclear why the bus was driven so fast or why the drivers chose alternative way to the destination, because those two drivers were dead.

Company for the bus driving service received administrative punishment on not having sufficient care for their driver’s health earlier this month. The driver at the accident was hired by the company last month. But, he did not have health check at his employment, which Industry Safety and Health Law mandated every bus service company. To cut cost on health check, some companies are reluctant to have that.

After a severe accident in Gunma in 2012, in which forty five were dead with crush of bus on the side wall of a highway, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism laid a strict limitation on driving distance per day. The Ministry mandated companies to set recorder of driving on each bus. By those regulations, small companies were pushed out of the business, not being able to pay for the cost brought by new regulation.

However, those measures were not proved to be effective. Bus drivers are getting fewer and older these years. Their salary is below the average of all employees and one out of six is over sixty years old. Pressure on the driver gets high and they have to work in deteriorated health condition.

Before the accident, the driver was not sure about where the bus would take rests and took less safe route than using highway. Some survivors told that the passengers noticed unusual driving and screamed “danger, danger.” The victims were sacrifice of cheap business and insufficient administration.