Eighteen people were injured Saturday morning in a nine-vehicle pileup on the Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward, firefighters said.
According to the Tokyo Fire Department, a 6-year-old boy sustained a serious neck injury, while 17 others, including an 8-year-old girl, suffered minor head and arm injuries.
Police said an initial three-vehicle collision caused the more serious accident when four vehicles that had stopped to avoid the crash were apparently rear-ended by two cars.
The vehicles in the pileup were trucks and station wagons, they said.
On Thursday, a multiple collision in a tunnel on the expressway left two dead and five injured.
Baby lives; mother dies
FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) Doctors delivered a baby girl safely Saturday morning while treating her mother who suffered serious injuries in a car accident and later died, police said.
A minicar carrying Chikako Sato, 26, who was eight months pregnant, was rear-ended by a large truck in Haramachi, Fukushima Prefecture, around 8:20 a.m. The housewife was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead an hour later, they said.
Sato's husband Hitoshi, 27, who was driving the minicar, sustained minor leg injuries but the couple's 1-year-old daughter was rescued unhurt.
Police arrested the truck driver, Masao Koromogawa, 46, from neighboring Miyagi Prefecture, on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in injury.
Investigators suspect Koromogawa took his eyes off the road and failed to notice Sato's car had stopped.