These cameras in a Japanese train station can tell if you're too drunk to ride

Japan seems to be a breeding ground for interesting innovations, whether it's the first "car" in a bag or a hotel staffed by robots.

Now a train station located in Osaka will be able to tell if its passengers had a long night and one too many beers. The West Japan Railway system that was just installed this week is using 46 cameras to detect telltale signals of an intoxicated citygoer to notify attendants in case of danger, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The West Japan Railway announcement reveals that the automated system will be able to tell when someone's staggering, lingering motionless on the platform for too long, or has passed out on the benches. Installed for safety purposes, the camera system won't be used to call out its offenders and identify them due to privacy concerns.

Japan has had a track record of drunken people causing fatal train-related accidents, and this new camera system could be the first step in lowering those numbers. In 2010, according to Japan Today, a prominent figure of a Japanese university was killed because a man had stumbled drunkenly onto a platform and caused him to fall on the tracks.

Three years later, there were 221 cases of passengers being struck by trains by April of the year, and a whopping 60 percent of them had been drunk.

An internal study, reported by AFP News, found that most alcohol-related incidents were caused by people waking up on the benches, walking off the platform edge, and falling down.

Although this system only currently runs in the Kyobashi station, the company says it wants to install it at more stations.