A Tokyo city bus driver, running empty, repeatedly honked and flashed his lights at a car, shouted an insult, and has been referred to prosecutors for road rage. I counted 2,747 comments: 83 to 17, and 79 percent of the vote went to comments asking what the other car had done first. First place took 15,485 presses. Second place, 10,094, is the comment I had shared on X. Comments that simply said road rage is never excusable took 2 percent

What happened

At 10:59 on the morning of Friday 11 September 2026, FNN Prime Online published this story on Yahoo! News Japan. A Toei Bus driver, a man in his thirties at the time, had been referred to prosecutors on suspicion of aggressive driving. In October 2025, while driving a bus with no passengers on board, he is suspected of repeatedly honking and flashing his headlights at a private car, and of driving aggressively, on the stretch between Shinobazu-dori in Tokyo's Bunkyo ward and JR Komagome station. It came to light when the other driver called the police, and a dashcam had recorded the words bakayaro, roughly you idiot. The driver's licence was revoked as an administrative penalty in June 2026, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation said it would confirm the facts and respond strictly. The driver is not named in the story, and I do not name him either.

A few words for readers outside Japan. Toei Bus is the public bus network run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Bureau of Transportation. The bus was running empty, on its way to or from the depot, so there were no passengers on board at the time. Being referred to prosecutors means the police have finished their investigation and passed the papers to the prosecutor's office without an arrest; the prosecutors now decide whether to bring charges. Revoking a licence is a separate administrative penalty imposed through the police, not by a court. Shinobazu-dori is a trunk road running north to south through Bunkyo ward. Twenty-six comments said they drive it every day, and described two lanes in each direction, the right-hand lane turning into a right-turn-only lane part of the way along, cars forcing their way past from the left, and plenty of cars parked outside the shops near the station.

Then the buttons. Comments on Yahoo! News Japan carry three buttons: I relate, I see, and hmm. On this site I count I relate and hmm, and rank comments by I relate. This time the top two comments passed 10,000 presses, and the Yahoo! page shows only a rounded figure, 15 thousand and 10 thousand. For those two comments alone, I read the exact counts, 15,485 and 10,094, from the data embedded in the page at 7:07, eight minutes after the capture. Every other number is as it stood at 6:59.

My reading

When I read the story, this is what I wrote. My words, translated.

As I thought, there are far too many idiot drivers. One second of the video in the original story shows the heart of the problem.

The bus just wants to drive straight along the first lane. That alone would keep it on time.

But one second of the video and you can see it cannot drive straight. Why? Parked cars everywhere.

In that state it has to move that huge body over to the second lane every time, and it cannot move like a bicycle.

Parked cars near the bus stops too. Of course a professional driver is under stress.

On top of that, doing what it takes to deliver the passengers safely.

But the passengers who get on are largely a low-grade crowd using things like the Silver Pass.

Stress from a low-grade crowd, stress from the traffic.

The only drivers who stay are low-grade ones who can put up with it. And what happens then? Road rage as standard.

One thing first. The incident in the story happened while the bus was running empty, with no passengers on board. My premise of keeping to the timetable and delivering passengers safely does not apply to this one journey as it stands. I include that in the check at the end.

83 to 17, and it is the thread at 20 hours, 2,747 comments

Across the 2,747 top-level comments, I relate was pressed 44,930 times and hmm 9,059 times: 83 to 17. The previous note, 0043, was 94 to 6, 0042 and 0041 were 95 to 5, 0039 was 85 to 15 and 0038 was 74 to 26, so among the last five this is the second most divided thread, after 0038.

The top 10 comments took 84 percent of the vote and the top 20 took 89 percent. The first-placed comment alone took 15,485 presses, 34 percent, and the top two together took 57 percent. Of the 2,747 comments, 1,786, 65 percent, received no I relate at all, and 2,345, 85 percent, received one or none. Comments where hmm outnumbered I relate numbered 484, 18 percent.

One caution about reading those numbers. Two-thirds of the comments in this thread were never pressed at all, so a small group with few presses does not mean the thread rejected that view. It means few people saw it. Where a group below counts only a handful of presses, all I can say is that the view was present in the room. Where a group carries thousands, the thread actively agreed with it.

The most hmm presses, 1,087, went to the 13th-placed comment, 12 percent of all the hmm presses in the thread. It said every bus company is the same, that Keihan Bus in Hirakata, Osaka, honks startlingly loudly and that its empty buses drive in a way that looks like tailgating all the time, and that staff training should be tightened. It had 259 I relate presses, so hmm outnumbered them four to one. Next came first place with 1,054 and second place with 742. The top two also drew the most replies, 173 and 149. The most-pressed comments were also the most-argued-with comments. That is the shape of this thread.

First place, "I want to know the lead-up too", 15,485 presses; second place is the comment I shared, 10,094

First place, 15,485 presses, 34 percent of the vote. It says the driver must be judged strictly and that nothing excuses aggressive driving, and then asks for the lead-up and for both sides' situations to be explained. The most-pressed comment in this thread neither condemned the driver nor defended him. It did both.

Second place, 10,094 presses, 22 percent of the vote. This is the comment I shared on X. It goes one step further than first place and says the car on the receiving end may well have done something first. Its 742 hmm presses were the third most in the thread, and its 149 replies the second most. Many people pressed it, and many people argued with it.

Comments asking for the lead-up, wanting the cause investigated, or saying the other driver may have been at fault too numbered 823 and took 79 percent of the vote. The top six comments are all here. Comments aimed at the media, calling the reporting one-sided, selective, or demanding that the other car's conduct be reported as well, numbered 302 and took 33 percent; the two groups together came to 941 comments and 89 percent. Nine-tenths of the vote in this thread went to wanting something the story did not say.

On the other side, comments saying that nothing excuses aggressive driving, that the driver failed as a professional, that you do not do this with the company name on the side of the bus, numbered 390 and took 48 percent. But 145 of them went on to say that they wanted the lead-up too, first place among them. Comments that said it is never excusable and asked nothing else numbered 245, 917 presses, 2 percent of the vote. Nine percent of the comments, and almost none of the vote.

Fourth place, 2,226 presses, said nobody knows how the other car was driving, that the writer tries to give buses priority, but that a bus driver is a person like any other driver, and the people driving buses should be people who can manage their anger whatever unpleasantness comes their way. Sixth place, 1,092 presses, said that since aggressive driving is wrong in any situation the punishment is fine, but that the car's driving beforehand should be investigated objectively too. In this thread, comments that took only one side drew little, and comments that took both drew the vote.

"Plenty of drivers who bring it on themselves": cars cutting in, 422 comments; parked cars, 192

Third place, 4,337 presses, 10 percent of the vote. It names both grievances: cars cutting in right in front of the bus, and cars using bus stops as parking spaces.

Comments about cars cutting in front of buses, refusing to let a bus out when it signals to pull away from a stop, or overtaking it, numbered 422, 7,921 presses, 18 percent; third and fifth place are here. Fifth place, 1,812 presses, described being cut off so badly that only hard braking avoided a collision, thinking about honking or flashing, and holding back for fear of being treated as the aggressor; not being able to protest even when the other side is plainly at fault felt wrong, it said. Eleventh place, 425 presses, listed cars in the bus priority lane, cars parked either side of stops, taxis and private cars that ignore a bus's indicator, and queues of cars waiting to pick people up in station forecourts, and said it made the writer want to take the buses' side.

Comments about illegally parked cars and cars stopped at bus stops numbered 192, 5,817 presses, 13 percent; third and eleventh place are here. The word for illegal parking itself appeared in 65 comments, 729 presses, 2 percent. The comment in 127th place, nine presses, said the writer drives a route bus for a living, that cars parked at the station bus stop stop passengers getting off, that there is not a single day without it, that honking to move them on is often the only option, and asked the police to enforce the rule.

One comment, in 108th place with 14 presses, came from someone who drives the very stretch of Shinobazu-dori I wrote about, every day. The way the lights are timed, it said, makes that stretch a spot where cars force their way past from the left-hand lane, and the number that try is unbelievable; just recently a driver who had failed to get past on the left glared at the writer all the way through a red light near Rikugien garden. There are plenty of cars parked outside the shops near the station too, it went on, but people like that never think they were wrong to force their way past, and then there are the ones crawling along looking at their phones. The writer's guess was that a car had forced its way past the bus, which blocks the view ahead, and cut in right in front of it; that does not make road rage acceptable, but the dashcams and the security cameras nearby should be taken into account.

Comments saying they know this road numbered 26, 50 presses in all. Others said the road has two lanes each way and the right-hand lane becomes right-turn-only at one junction, so a car forcing its way from the right lane into the left one may have been the trigger; another said delivery trucks and parked cars sit all along the shopping streets. Few presses, but these are the comments that described my parked-cars-everywhere from the ground.

"I swallow it and keep driving": 82 comments from people who drive for a living

Nineteenth place, 151 presses. Comments from people who said, unprompted, that they drive for a living numbered 82, 1,034 presses, 2 percent. Ninth place, 521 presses, came from a former bus driver: there are always some cars behaving oddly, putting up with every unreasonable driver every single time must be exhausting, but in this day and age the one who snaps loses, and the writer used to train alone every day at not getting irritated, more than at driving itself. Those who named their trade mostly wrote that they understood the feeling, and nearly all of them finished by saying it still must not be done.

Comments containing the word stress numbered 106, 581 presses, 1 percent. Widening that to comments saying they understood how he felt, that it is a hard job, that they sympathised, gives 267 comments, 2,387 presses, 5 percent. Comments saying the bus driver was not at fault or that punishing the bus alone is one-sided numbered 74, 14,508 presses, 32 percent; second and third place are here.

"Closer to a service job than to driving": the driver shortage, 297 comments; rude passengers, 64

Twelfth place, 282 presses. Comments about the driver shortage, falling standards, low pay, or companies hiring anyone they can numbered 297, 4,363 presses, 10 percent. Eighth place, 642 presses, said that since switching to commuting by Toei bus two years ago the writer had noticed a surprising number of rough drivers, that there were probably reasons, the shortage, being told off by the company when the timetable slips, complaints from passengers, that the writer boards Tokyo buses expecting them to run a little late, and that the company should coach its drivers to put safety before the timetable.

Comments about rude passengers, complainers, abusive customers or people arguing over fares numbered 64, 805 presses, 2 percent. The Silver Pass I mentioned, the cheap annual pass for older Tokyo residents, appeared in one comment, 3 presses, and that comment described a driver who kept lurching away from stops and braking hard although almost every passenger was an elderly Silver Pass holder. It was written from the side of the passengers being thrown about, not against them. Comments about timetables, punctuality or the schedule numbered 29, 1,593 presses, 4 percent; eighth and twelfth place are here.

Toei buses drive rough, 733 comments and 9 percent; 320 comments puzzled by the timeline

Comments describing Toei buses as rough, speeding, squeezing other vehicles, jumping lights or being high-handed, from experience or impression, numbered 733, 3,972 presses, 9 percent of the vote. By count that is 27 percent of the thread, one comment in four. Seventh place, 1,000 presses, said that a licence revocation makes you wonder whether the driver had been flagged before, that Toei buses can drive rough, that some routes force them into the right-turn lane, that taxi standards have fallen too, and that the police do not enforce the rules where the traffic is complicated. Fifteenth place, 233 presses, said the timetable may be tight but some drivers are plainly rough, and that many buses barrel through pedestrian crossings without slowing. Seventeenth place, 157 presses, said Toei drivers' manners and skills have slipped and they should be sent to train on narrow mountain roads in Shikoku; it drew 137 hmm presses too. Eighteenth place, 154 presses, described an Odakyu bus, from another operator, coming up a hill on the wrong side of a bend, five cars having to reverse to let it through, and the bus driving off as if nothing had happened; its 218 hmm presses outnumbered its I relate presses. Comments about other bus companies or buses outside Tokyo numbered 238, 918 presses, 2 percent.

Comments puzzled by the timeline, asking why the licence was revoked in June 2026 for something that happened in October 2025 and why the referral is only being reported now, whether he kept driving after June, whether he had been driving without a licence, or whether some other offence was involved, numbered 320, 1,827 presses, 4 percent. The story does not answer any of that, and neither can I. Comments calling the punishment too heavy, saying revocation was excessive for this alone, numbered 63, 70 presses, 0.2 percent. Comments saying the punishment was deserved and that he should never drive again were far more numerous.

Comments mentioning that the bus was running empty numbered 132, 640 presses, 1 percent. Some were glad there had been no passengers on board; others said buses running empty drive rougher than buses with passengers.

Counted, but not quoted

Comments mentioning foreigners or other countries numbered 47, 522 presses, 1 percent. They ranged from complaints about foreign visitors stopping taxis at bus stops, to comparisons with roads abroad, to claims that a foreigner would not have been charged. Under this site's rules I give the count and do not quote them. Setting aside the insult in the headline, comments containing abusive words numbered 255, 348 presses, 0.8 percent, some aimed at the driver and some at the other car. Comments about the expert commentary attached to the story numbered 32, 16 presses; calls for driverless buses, 35 comments, 96 presses; calls for the driver to be named, 20 comments, 63 presses.

Checking my own reading

That there are far too many idiot drivers. Comments asking for the lead-up or saying the other car may have been at fault too numbered 823 and took 79 percent of the vote, the mainstream of the thread; the top six are all here. But the thread did not say that this makes road rage acceptable. First place says it is not, before anything else. A hit, but the thread's way of saying it was to say both things.

That the street is lined with parked cars, including near bus stops. Parked cars and cars stopped at bus stops came up in 192 comments, 13 percent, third place among them. The comment from someone who drives Shinobazu-dori every day also mentioned the parked cars outside the shops. The direction is right. But the grievance the thread raised most was not parking; it was cars cutting in right in front of the bus and blocking it from pulling out, 422 comments, 18 percent. To my picture of a bus that only wants to drive straight along its lane, the thread added the cars that pull in front of it while it tries.

That stress is only natural for a professional driver. The word stress appeared in 106 comments, 1 percent; widening it to comments that said they understood how he felt gives 267, 5 percent. The 82 people who said they drive for a living wrote that they understood the stress and that the one who snaps loses. Half a hit.

That the passengers are largely a low-grade crowd using the Silver Pass. Comments about rude passengers or complaints numbered 64, 2 percent, and the Silver Pass appeared once, 3 presses, in a comment about elderly passengers being thrown about by a rough driver. The thread located the driver's stress in the cars around him, not in his passengers. A miss.

That only low-grade drivers who can put up with it stay. The shortage, falling standards and low pay came up in 297 comments, 10 percent, mostly in the form of companies having to hire anyone. A hit.

That road rage becomes the norm. Comments saying Toei buses drive rough numbered 733, one in four, 9 percent of the vote; the thread too saw this as more than a one-off. But 79 percent of the vote went to wanting the lead-up all the same. Half a hit.

Three hits, two halves, one miss. And since the bus was running empty, my premise of a timetable to keep and passengers to deliver safely did not apply to this one journey as it stood. The 132 comments that mentioned it wrote both things: good that it was empty, and that empty buses are the rough ones.

This was a thread that neither condemned the driver nor defended him, and wanted what the story had left out. In the previous note, on the yellow centre lines, comments that got the law right took 0.7 percent of the vote; here, comments that only said road rage is never excusable took 2 percent. For readers outside Japan, this is what I would pass on: under a Japanese road-rage story, the comment that gets pressed most is not the one that says who was wrong, but the one that asks what happened before.