Video Killed the Radio Car

A story of how distracted driving became the norm

Life in Japan often creates cultural shock for us simple folk from Australia. Yet despite the shifts in language, food, and general etiquette, perhaps the most jarring has been the phenomenon of live television. In cars. While moving.

This has always been a mystery from the first time I was picked up by a friend, who had their regular season baseball game on at a very audible volume. From the car dashboard. I had initially chalked this up as an individual quirk. Maybe he had specifically engineered his car to include this feature, despite its obvious driving hazard. Yet as I have been in more and more cars, this has become more and more common.

This article is where I explore how live television has managed to be a part of the driving experience in Japan.

Traffic Law and Order

In most countries, Australia not exempted, watching video while driving is illegal. Without going into the minutiae of legal text, the idea is that driving should be safe. Distracted driving is dangerous. TV’s are distracting. Thus videos in cars for drivers is illegal.

Classic car television

This principle holds true in Japan. They also came to this conclusion that videos are distracting. So how did we get to the norm where drivers have a live feed for watching television on the go?

As with many Japanese laws… Thank you loopholes!

Japanese traffic regulations clearly bans this:

“(1) The display of motion pictures including broadcasted television pictures and
replayed video and DVD pictures shall be prohibited. (However, traffic information
and other similar motion pictures specially simplified for driving use may be
displayed.)”

This sounds oddly similar to the laws in Australia and other non-television watching driving nations. However, the common interpretation is that this applies to video from an external device, such as a phone, or DVD player. The car television is built-in. Thus excluded from this law.

Naturally, this feels wrong. The authorities thought so too, and have mandated regulations that means all cars which has a built-in television should only display the images when stopped or in park. Otherwise, only the sound is meant to be provided. You know, like a much more permitted technology: radio.

In my own personal experience, the television dashboard screen has never stopped while the car is moving. I’ve only ever seen it stop when the car is stopped and parked and turned off. Anecdotally but not legal advice, this is not an accident. The idea is that many, if not all, Japanese car salesmen will kindly switch off this “screen off mechanism” as a gesture of goodwill during the purchase. This allows you to freely watch live TV at all locations, stationary or not.

We Live in a Television Society

Sure, there is the regulatory grey zone of allowing this to be inbuilt to Japanese cars, but why in Japan and nowhere else? In effect, the Japanese public has accepted that live television is perfectly acceptable to have in day-to-day transport. Keep in mind that choice of words: live television. There is no cultural acceptance toward streamed platforms like Netflix or recorded shows.

This is societal. There are several factors that are at play.

This probably deserves many more articles and I won’t go into too much depth, but live television in Japan holds a different place in the home than elsewhere. It’s more a soothing constant background rather than necessarily something to sit down and watch. The live broadcast of sports, or variety show, or news is always within earshot, acting almost as a podcast, radio, or background music rather than television. This has meant that instead of being seen as something to be seen, it’s accepted as part of the everyday background, be it in homes or cars.

Couple this with the insanely saturated world that is the Japanese domestic automobile market. Think of all the venerable Japanese names that sell cars in your country. Now think about how hard it is to sell cars within their own. Car makers needed something to stand out. And once someone decided to stick a TV into their car, everyone else needed to follow suit. The customers demanded it, and really it was too expensive not to offer if you were Toyota, or Honda, or Nissan or etc.

The final thing at play was the traffic. Traffic has been bad almost since they attached wheels to cars. Before that, the foot traffic must have been the thing to complain about and honestly, Japanese pedestrian sidewalks are still crowded even with cars. So televisions within the cars have been a simple fix that acknowledges just how crappy the traffic is and help pass the time for every sorry commuter.

Black Mirror

This is still the everyday Japanese experience. Yet many foresee a change in viewing habits as younger Japanese (yes they exist), are less enamoured by the traditional live television. Instead, more and more gravitate toward the global giants of Youtube, Netflix and TikTok. Is it a matter of when, and not if, Japanese regulators decide to allow for non-live television to be a part of the cars?

Or possibly technology will drive us towards a world of self-driving cars. This might finally allow the rest of the world to experience that sweet feeling of watching your favourite show on your daily drive.

Whatever the case may be, Japanese car life still carries the benefits and costs to this mobile television. We haven’t yet addressed the safety elephant in the room. All this broadcast TV is likely permissible or non-enforced due to Japan’s low rates of traffic mortality. Ranking amongst the very lowest in OECD nations (and subsequently all nations), in fatalities, Japanese authorities must believe that there isn’t any meaningful increase in safety from removing televisions.

Source: Road Safety Australia

Maybe the lesson the authorities learnt is don’t fix what isn’t broken. In fact, the rest of the world could learn something from Japan. Maybe all that we need to keep our streets safe could be putting that tiny TV into the dashboard. The conclusion I draw is that maybe we could all benefit from a little more Japanese game shows in life.