Download osm data, extract roads and surveillance, gpd overlay how=difference, remove/edit the different osmid's, write to pbf file, convert to obf file w/ osmandmapcreator, import into OsmAnd.
Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone.
> Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs [that we -- regular people -- know about] on your phone [while still being observed by the ones we don't know about].
I made a version which does the avoidance dynamically at runtime, works for any tracks you want to use: https://alprwatch.org/navigation. It works fully offline after you download the maps and overlays
To add, a bit complicated, but osm data can be edited with osmium (cpp) or pyosmium (python). Then the edited data can be put into osmandmapcreator to generate the file to use in Osmand. (I used this to route around ALPRs)
- In the "Control of Building Use by Land Use Zones" you can see how even the most exclusive of zoning enables "Houses with other small scale function", Clinics, Schools or stores with very small footprints.
- Structures are restricted by the shape, shadow, and floor area.
- No mention of "single-family" housing.
A map (of Tokyo) overlaying the gradient of zoning from least to most permissive. You can see how the up-zoning follows the major roads:
https://tokyochizu.github.io/zoning.html
It also avoids differentiating on two very different scenarios: coming to Japan without a work visa to work illegally for a local company, and doing work for an employer or client not in Japan while being in Japan.
On paper, all laws are strict. In practice, some of them, and some interpretations of them, are considered a higher priority than others (which can range to straight up ignoring them or even violating them themselves).
The point I'm making is I don't get why they've bothered with such a pointless visa, and it sounds like some PR stunt. If it extended to a year or was a residence permit then it'd be an actual valuable visa worth the effort.
The only thing I can think of is maybe they hoped it'd be used by digital nomads to come work for local companies for 6 months, but that doesn't sound likely. PR gimmick or "we're doing things" purpose more likely.
A license isn't needed for an electric bicycle. The law states that it is classified as an electric bicycle if it is only pedal assist and only up to 24kph (15mph). The issue arises when either there are no pedals, or it can be operated without using pedals, like these suitcases. Electric only operation moves the classification to a scooter, thus license needed.
In China some able-bodied people have started riding electric wheelchairs to get around licensing and usage laws restricting scooters. Some of the wheelchairs are pretty quick now, basically the same drivetrain in a different package.
There was a new carve out created last year that allows driving electric scooters without a license, provided they meet some requirements (speed limiter, a speed indicator light, etc).
They managed to get a new category created just for Luup scooters. I've seen some on social media passive-aggressively wondering what kind of sorcery was at play for that.
In Japan, a bicycle with no functional pedals is called: a broken bicycle.
A bike with a motor which propels itself is called: a motor bike.
Japan has had bicycles with electric assist motors for 10+ years. They are popular with moms who need to carry kids but where a car is too cumbersome.
Japan has also had motor bikes for a century. They are popular with lower class workers who want to skip traffic jams and commute cheaper.
Japan is not confused by the shape of a motor bike. Making it look like luggage does not make it luggage (with a motor) but rather a luggage shaped motor bike. Japan appears to handle this Nominative determinism issue quite well.
Looks like it was relaxed in 2008 to up to 200% of input at up to 10kph/6mph then taper to zero at 24kph/15mph, yeah it is kind of restrictive.
I think equal power part is not too complicated to implement, with a load-bearing "just" you just sync synchronous motor driver to the rotor phase and limit current upstream. I believe a prototype also has to be brought to some office to get certified. Frankly it's all par for the course for a Japanese regulation; engineering cost is considered free and everything is supposed to be approved by someone official-ish.
What really happens is people like my friend make their own ebike that is super powerful but looks like a normal bicycle, and while it is against the rules nobody ever questions it because it looks like a bicycle.
Such a bad regulations. Rideable luggage actually seems reasonably innovative.
It sucks how the government often gets in the way of meaningful improvements. Feels like we are really headed for dark ages.
Japan has a very public problem of self powered vehicles running into people/stuff.
With an aging population, drivers who mistakingly hit the accel when they meant to brake, thus running full missile mode into shops and sidewalks make the news almost every day("Prius missile")
The last things people want is additional vehicles plowing forward at the push of a button, this time indoors and/or on the sidewalk from the start.
> drivers who mistakingly hit the accel when they meant to brake, thus running full missile mode into shops and sidewalks make the news almost every day
"Almost every day"? Hmmm... I do not think so. Wouldn't the same happen in other countries with lots of Prius and old people, like the US?
While I'm at it, here's the most famous Prius case in Japan, where a 87-year-old geriatric senior bureaucrat ran over and killed a mother and her child, but was treated with kid gloves until the husband whipped up enough public outrage to force the police to do something about it:
It’s really very many when you consider that a vanishingly tiny fraction of those deaths happen yearly in Japan thanks to it having alternatives to driving. Apparently 42k in 2022 in the USA [1] vs 2.6k in Japan [2] while the US population is less than 3 times larger.
Proportionally scaling that out I can’t think of many policies where Americans would dismiss 30k+ excess civilian deaths as “not much” and the cost of doing business, only a measly ten Sept 11 attacks. It’s pretty amazing how cheaply the USA values human life if a car is involved.
This is a great post, but I want to dispel this never-ending myth on HN that Japan does not have a lot of cars and drivers. To be clear: All highly advanced non-micro-state nations are driving nations! Read that twice, please. (Yes, we all know that Japan is insanely urbanised with at least three megacities.) Just 15km outside major cities in Japan will be lots and lots of driving. More than 30km, basically every house has a car.
That said, I don't know why the number of deadly accidents is so much lower in Japan, compared to the US. Is it speed? Is it driver training? There are so many K-cars driving next to huge dump trucks that could squish them like a fly!
I can't say it's definitely the cause, but some of the things that might play a role are that the driving test is much more strict/difficult, the minimum age to get a permit is 18, the highways are generally less dense, the speed limits are lower, and traffic enforcement is stricter.
No. This is your presumably tech-informed “any regulation that gets in the way of my passing intuition of what’s good is TERRIBLE!” Have you been in a city as dense as (parts of) Japan with completely unregulated use of vehicles like this? It gets quite bad quite quickly. I say this as someone that uses an electric scooter regularly. It’s quite easy for there to be a high enough concentration of idiots doing the wrong thing that it’s not worth it overall. Putting some rules around use is just the intuitive reaction to this, learned by countless jurisdictions worldwide.
"Does it need regulation?" and "Should it need more licensing than an electric bicycle?" are two entirely separate questions, and I agree that answering "yes" to the latter seems wrong.
Bicycles are known and understood by the people you're sharing spaces with; there are rules for where they're allowed and where they're not allowed and how they have to behave. The Japanese laws essentially allow ebikes that mimic bikes very closely to be used as bikes; otherwise you have to follow the rules for a scooter/moped (which is, after all, what you are).
I'll be riding my bike in a designated a bike lane (which is sometimes shared with pedestrians, dogs, etc.) with clearly marked speed limit signs of 15mph. That's plenty fast in general, but even more so in busy spots. And suddenly a near-silent e-bike will go flying past me (no "On your left," by the way) at speeds close to 30mph. Happens all of the time and is bafflingly reckless and arrogant.
The way folks ride class 3 e-bikes they really should be treated as mopeds: put them on the roads like other motorized vehicles and licensed and (hopefully) forced to obey the rules of the road. Just my opinion, but they seem to break the spirit of being in the bike lane. The touristy day-cruiser eBikes like Lime bikes are fine.
Legally, in many places they are mopeds. The problem is that there is no way to enforce the law because they look like e-bikes. It takes checking model numbers of bike or components. Throttle is relatively easy to notice.
I own a Brompton, which fits through the baggage X-ray and can be checked like a stroller at the gate. I've flown with it more than 12 times, and you had better believe I've ridden it in the terminal
I only do this during late arrivals when the airport is almost empty, travel at a reasonable speed, and otherwise conduct myself like a civilized human being. On a bike. In the airport. It's great actually.
Why not? If it can be folded into a carry-on, draw a line between bicycle and wheelchair. I doubt many would object to a carry that turns into an electric wheelchair.
This reminds me so much of the “no vehicles in the park” test.[1] We allow wheelchairs as a special case for people with mobility issues, not because we want bike lanes inside airports.
That's the point, isn't it, no one would ride a bicycle through a crowd, and if they did they'd ride very slowly and with extreme caution. But no such convention exists for animated suitcases.
I only have some light use cases, so I use a cheap laptop (<$250) with a ryzen APU 8gb soldered/shared ram. Then added a 16gb ram stick, booted off a usb bios from github, increased uma buffer to 8gb. I had stable diffusion working, it was slow, but I'm pretty sure its faster than cpu/ram (2 min for 512x512 20-25 step).
On youtube you can block the section with shorts in them with ublock (rclick > block element), this was good enough for my use. I don't know about other sites.
Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone.
Edit: link https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router - I tend to find ALPRs that are missing in the OSM data, so keep on updating OSM data.