The Daily Death Toll Nov 21 2005
Every morning at street corners throughout Tokyo, police officers methodically update the scoreboards on display outside their 1,200 Kobans (police boxes) around the city. For those walking by, the boards tell how many accidents and deaths occurred the day before. Accidents (in black) are usually in the hundreds, deaths (in red) rarely reach double figures.
It starts you thinking. Are residents positively influenced by the tolls, inspired to continue the day more cautiously? Does it have pensioners on the buses comparing notes on the no-go sushi bars? And statistically, how is it quantified? What constitutes an accident? And as long as life expectancy is in Japan, I assume this doesn't include natural deaths. So is it purely traffic-related, or do we get gangland shootings in their too (well not in Tokyo really, no).
The thing is, I've recently taken a rather morbid curiosity in all this, checking the day's death toll on the way to work, much as I check my site's hit count when I arrive.
What I really need is for some eager developer to make a "Death Toll Widget" for me so I can remain up to date with the latest Koban action across Tokyo. But judging by this photo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's website, there's more chance of getting a stream of Starsky & Hutch out of them than an RSS feed.