(Bloomberg) – In the past several weeks alone, elderly Japanese drivers have been wreaking havoc across the country: breaking through median barriers into oncoming traffic, plowing over pedestrians crossing the road, and smashing into other cars. In all these cases, somebody was killed.

And as Japan's population continues to age — meaning more and more older drivers are behind the wheel — the problem is only getting worse: Drivers aged 75 and over were connected to 459 fatal accidents last year, 13% of Japan's total, up from 7.4% a decade earlier, National Policy Agency data show. Stopping the carnage on the roads is an “urgent problem,” the agency said in a statement.

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“Urgent issue'

“Preventing road accidents caused by changes in the physical condition of drivers is an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with,” Mineko Baba, of Keio University's Center for Integrated Medical Research, wrote in a research report last year. “Laws and society haven't caught up to the situation of the rapidly increasing number of dementia patients.”