June 15, 2006
JAMA Publishes an Update of On the Road to Sustainable Mobility:
Automobiles, Road Safety, and Environmental Protection
The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, Inc. (JAMA; Fujio Cho, Chairman) is pleased to announce the publication of a new, updated edition (available in Japanese only) of its pamphlet On the Road to Sustainable Mobility, which details the Japanese automobile industry’s responses to the critical issues of road safety and automotive environmental performance.
In April 2004 JAMA released Working Towards a Sound Automotive Future, an outline of proposed measures to be adopted over the next ten years—not only by the auto industry, but by government and vehicle users as well—in order to significantly increase road safety and reduce the impact of motor vehicles on the environment.
Those measures were formulated in response to the urgent need to address effectively wide-ranging safety and environmental issues, including reducing the number of road fatalities and curbing global warming.
JAMA subsequently published two follow-up reports—in October 2004 and June 2005—on the progress made by automakers in regard to increased road safety and improved environmental performance. The latest edition of On the Road to Sustainable Mobility represents the third report in the series, describing the efforts (as briefly summarized below) of JAMA and its members in regard to:
1. Promoting Greater Road Safety
- Continuous advances in vehicle safety through the introduction of new technologies and the expanded use of vehicle safety equipment. The goal is to reduce the number of road accidents as well as the number of injuries and fatalities.
- Development of new road safety-education programs targeting elderly drivers; creation and distribution of the “Safety Action 21” road-safety educational texts aimed specifically at teenagers; formulation and implementation of other road safety-focused public awareness campaigns.
2. Curbing Global Warming
- Vigorous efforts to make automobiles increasingly fuel-efficient. Gasoline-powered passenger cars have already achieved an average fuel- economy performance of 15.4 km/liter, exceeding the Japanese government’s 2010 target value of 15.1 km/liter.
- Further development of alternative-fuel (or “clean-energy”) vehicles and expansion of their model ranges. The number of clean-energy vehicles in use in Japan grew from 180,000 in fiscal 2003 to 250,000 in fiscal 2004.
- To reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector through improved traffic flow, promotion of a road traffic data compilation/analysis and response formulation/implementation scheme (based on the Deming/PDCA model). A trial quantitative-evaluation study using road traffic data has already been successfully completed.
3. Improving Air Quality
- Air quality simulations conducted by JAMA indicate that meeting government standards for concentrations of NO2 and suspended particulate matter (SPM) in Tokyo by 2010 is feasible, with the anticipated exception of a single roadside vehicle-exhaust monitoring site. Thus, although other factors must also be addressed in this regard, it is projected that national air quality standards for 2010 will be largely satisfied.
Greater road safety and environmental protection will remain top-priority issues for JAMA in the years ahead, and JAMA aims to continue being a source of pertinent data, analytical evaluations, timely proposals and informative status reports on the progress being made in these critical areas.
