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Apparently, playing Mario Kart makes you a better driver. But the findings last year of the Association for Psychological Science journal will do little to becalm the residents of Tokyo, whose streets are swarming with go-karts driven by Mario and Luigi lookalikes.

OK, swarming is a bit of an exaggeration, but a number of tourist companies have indeed been renting go-karts to Mario Bros fans, who have been causing relative mayhem on the streets of Japan's biggest city.

One South Korean holidaymaker even crashed his go-kart into a police box, while another fun seeker managed to hit a parked car. These are pretty serious events for a country with one of the lowest road traffic fatality rates on the planet (although as yet there have been no deaths related to the diminutive four-wheeled machines).

But the Japanese are acting: in March the authorities plan to update the country's Road Transport Vehicle Act and tighten up safety regulations. They want go-kart drivers to wear seatbelts as well as head gear and they want all go karts to be at least a metre high – to help ensure they are spotted by other road users.

“It’s dangerous as other cars cannot see them because of their low heights,” one official told Agence France-Presse. The AFP also reports that they want the go-karts' driving wheels to be made of a soft material in order to minimise any injuries.

At present, your average Mario-driven go-kart on Japan’s streets is classified as a moped – which means safety rules governing their use are pretty relaxed.

But that could all change in spring. And if new rules mirror those binding regular car use, people dressed up as Yoshi or perhaps a toxic mushroom will no longer be able to take selfies of themselves while careering through downtown Tokyo. Surely no bad thing.

There’s no doubting that the Japanese generally welcome their recent tourism boom, but in a nation where the rule-breaking and non-conformist behaviour are big no-nos, having foreigners driving around town in tiny cars while dressed as moustachioed, pint-size Italian plumbers, is simply not on.