Tokyo's secret precision driving team

Recent state visits to Japan by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, US President Barack Obama and Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu focused on issues from the Trans-Pacific Partnership to international security.

But a sneak peek behind the scenes also revealed the existence of a secret precision driving team among the ranks of Japan’s police force.

On May 14 in downtown Tokyo, just a stone’s throw from the Imperial Palace, three black Lexus LS460 sedans were seen making their way through traffic in close convoy formation at speeds over the legal limit.

We're not sure whether Abbott, Obama or Netanyahu were on board, but those three drivers certainly knew what they were doing. Driving quickly, a car length apart.

It reminded me of the other time I’d seen such impressive driving skills. Maintaining the 100km/h speed limit on my way out to Tokyo’s Narita Airport in June 2008, I was abruptly flagged down by a stationary patrol car and asked to stop and wait.

Unlike the one or maybe two other times over the past 20 years when police intervention required me to dig out my driver’s license and make excuses, this time the cop just stayed in his car and waved a glowing red baton.

Breathing a sigh of relief that I wasn’t going to lose any demerit points, I thought: “Aha, we must be waiting for some VIPs to pass by.”  I was right.

Waiting for around three minutes at the entrance to a merging lane that took me onto the Wangan (pronounced ‘one gun’ in Japanese) expressway, I was surprised to see – you guessed it – three black Lexus LS460s fly past doing at least 150km/h in single-file close-convoy formation. And when I say close-knit formation, these guys were less than one-car length apart from each other.

It was then that I remembered Australian PM Kevin Rudd had just wrapped up his state visit and was heading home. The occupant of one of those cars had to be Rudd, I thought. Japanese police do not go to such lengths for just any foreign dignitary.

I could not confirm the PM’s presence in one of those sedans immediately, but several days later a mate from the embassy confirmed it was indeed Rudd’s convoy.

As I've seen first-hand, there is a dark side to Japan’s black limo convoys. Last week I saw another convoy of three black Lexus sedans, only this time they were threading their way through heavy freeway traffic that was crawling at just 10km/h.

Their precision at maintaining a single-file, bumper-to-bumper convoy at speed and their ability to block both lanes by straddling the centre white lines was as eye-opening as it was inspirational.

And no one got upset. Nobody honked their horns. There was no police escort and no indication of whether the occupants were visiting dignitaries or yakuza gangsters, but that did not matter to my fellow motorists.

The double lane of traffic parted like the Red Sea and allowed the convoy to pass. Try such antics on roads in Australia or the US and people would definitely take offence, call the cops or just block you.

But in Japan, there's an unwritten law. When a policeman tells you to stop and wait for no apparent reason, you do. And when you see big black limos, like our Lexus LSs with unidentified passengers pushing their way through traffic, you just let them pass. You don’t ask questions. Mr Average doesn't want to cross paths with whoever might be inside.

There’s a hierarchy here and everyone knows their place in it. If there's a dignitary in a convoy, then you are just delaying an international meeting. But the occupants might be more dubious and dangerous.

If you insult the wrong person by not letting them pass, it could lead to a brief show of aggression in which someone exits their limo, kicks your door with a steel-capped boot and then nonchalantly gets back in.

These gents carry on this way because they know that nobody will press charges. I've seen it happen. So I just let them pass. I know my place. And I like my life in Japan too much to risk such complications.