OTS announced that the company would switch all of its rental cars to new vehicles with the newest traffic accident prevention devices installed by the next summer season.

OTS has a fleet of 3,500 vehicles and the company estimates the switch to cost up to ¥160 million. The company says they undertook the project in order to reduce traffic accidents in the prefecture, especially by foreign visitors.

Yasushi Nakamura, the managing director of OTS, says the project is, of course, for the benefit of rental car users, but it will also make streets safer for local Okinawan drivers.

All cars in the fleet will have collision avoidance sensors, drive recorders and, depending on the type of the car, some will have lane hogging alarms and auto changing low and high beam systems.

The number of foreign visitors opting for rental cars is increasing fast. Among OTS customers, 25 percent were foreigners in 2014, which rose to 43 percent in 2015, and in the first three months of 2016, half of the OTS Rent-a-Car customers were from overseas.

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