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A driver in Japan pulled up to an intersection and found it crowded with police officers. An accident, presumably. Then the officers handed the car in front a daikon, the long white radish that goes into Japanese stews, pickles and grated toppings. The photo the driver posted shows what it was all about: a daikon wrapped in a printed flyer.
The flyer introduces "Operation Daikonzetsu." The radishes are handed out to raise awareness of traffic safety, in the hope that drunk driving and traffic accidents will be eradicated, and whoever eats the daikon is asked to bring up traffic safety at the table. The whole campaign rests on a pun, which the flyer lays out with some care (explained after the first comment).
This one was run by the local traffic safety association in the Naruko area of Osaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, together with the Naruko police station and the police box in nearby Onikobe. Radish giveaways under the same name have reportedly been held in other parts of Japan for years.
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My take
Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.
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So there were a bunch of cops at the intersection and I was like “huh, was there an accident?” and then they handed the car in front of me a daikon and I was like “wait, a DAIKON??” and then it turned out to be this lol
The flyer: Operation Daikonzetsu. What is Operation Daikonzetsu? We hand out daikon radishes in the hope that drunk driving and traffic accidents will be eradicated, to raise awareness of traffic safety. So when you eat this daikon, we’d be grateful if you’d bring up the topic of traffic safety. (Let’s all follow the rules of the road so nobody gets into an accident.) Daikon + Konzetsu. This is Operation Daikonzetsu.
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The name is a mash-up. 大根 (daikon, “radish”) and 根絶 (konzetsu, “eradication”) share the character 根, “root.” The flyer stacks the two words so they overlap on that kanji, giving 大根絶: daikonzetsu, a radish and a pledge to wipe out accidents in one word. Written out in full, though, 大根根絶 reads as “eradicating the daikon.”
ダイコンラン (daikon-ran) sounds exactly like 大混乱 (daikonran), “total chaos.” The original poster took the “ran” as the English “run” instead.