TOKYO, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- A car driven by an elderly man mounted a sidewalk in Tokyo's busy Shinjuku district near the station on Wednesday and plowed into and injured five pedestrians, according to local police , reigniting concerns about the rapidly increasing numbers of elderly people still behind the wheel.
The police quoted the 79-year-old driver as saying that before he realized what was going on, he had already crashed his car.
"I had already crashed the car before I realized it," the driver said, adding that he was choking after drinking some tea.
Japan's "silver tsunami" demographic crisis, which is set to worsen, has made the topic of elderly drivers a national talking point, with such accidents rarely out of the headlines these days.
A total of five pedestrians were injured in the most recent incident, the police said, including a man in his 80s and a woman in her 20s who have both been descried as sustaining seriously injuries.
Their injuries, however, are not deemed to be life-threatening, the police said.
The police also said that the driver himself suffered minor injuries in the crash, as did his 76-year-old wife who was also in the car when it mounted the curb and hit the pedestrians.
According to the police, the incident occurred at around 1:30 p.m. local time on a busy shopping street in Shinjuku, just 100 meters east of JR Shinjuku Station, a major transportation hub in central Tokyo.
Drivers aged 75 or older, including those who had not taken a cognition test, caused 418 fatal accidents in 2017 alone of which 41 percent were vehicle collisions and 19 percent involved collisions between vehicles and pedestrians.
According to the data from Japan's National Police Agency (NPA), 194 people died in accidents caused by drivers suspected of having dementia or impaired cognition, and cases where drivers mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal before causing a fatal accident where almost eight times higher among the elderly during the reporting period.
National Public Safety Commission Chairperson Hachiro Okonogi said previously that the data on senior drivers reveals that age-related diminished cognitive function could lead to increasing numbers of fatal accidents.
Okonogi said that people should intervene when they think their parents or grandparents are displaying signs of diminished capacity when driving, and ask them to give up their licenses voluntarily.
Under a revised traffic law that took effect in March 2017, drivers aged 75 or older are required to see a doctor in the preliminary part of the screening if they are suspected of having dementia.
The NPA has reported that around 1,900 elderly drivers had their licenses revoked or suspended after undergoing medical tests in the first year under the revised traffic law.
