Most industrialized countries don't restrict people that are hard of hearing from getting driver's licenses for standard vehicles.

"We need cars in our private lives and for our jobs. We would like to take part in society," an official of the Japan Federation of The Deaf said.

Until recently, Japan's Road Traffic Law totally banned the deaf from obtaining driver's licenses.

But Japan's legal world has been reviewing license regulations for physically handicapped people. The Road Traffic Law was revised in 2001, and the ban on deaf people partially lifted.

But a regulation remains requiring successful driver-license candidates to be able to hear a 90-decibel sound from 10 meters away.

"When you are at the wheel, you may need to judge traffic conditions by sirens and horns of speeding vehicles," an NPA official said. "We cannot say that hearing disabilities are totally unrelated to safe driving."

At the request of the NPA, the International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences carried out a survey to find that deaf people were allowed to obtain standard licenses, equivalent to a first-degree driver's license in Japan, in the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Australia.

It is believed that 80 to 90 percent of information required for driving is obtained visually.

Therefore, those countries allow deaf people to get a car license unless they suffer another disability.

France requires deaf drivers to set extra mirrors on their cars.

"Why aren't deaf people allowed to get a license? They can understand the movement of speeding vehicles by looking at other cars," said Yutaka Osugi, a top secretary of the federation.

Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20051102p2a00m0na023000c.html