A tunnel just outside of Otsuki collapsed yesterday killing 9 people, and injuring 2 more. Otsuki is the next exit off the highway from us, and is home to one of Ben and my favorite places, Saruhashi. Ben and I have driven through that tunnel nearly a dozen time in the last couple of months, and had planned on going to Otsuki yesterday. The tunnel is 3 miles long, and regularly highly congested, our last trip through the tunnel took 25 minutes to pass through the tunnel.
Our area of Japan is very mountainous, tunnels are very common. It is rare to go much more then 5 miles without passing through a tunnel.
There is some outrage towards the tunnel inspectors who checked the tunnel about a month ago. It seems likely that they were pressured at the time to work quickly as to not add to the common congestion
the highway often sees in that area.
Further reading
This is the Japanese "quality" our Trotskyite professors tried to foist on us with Toyota accelerators?
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