Accidents and Violations Involving Heavy Vehicles

Mr Speaker, there were 2,160 road accidents involving heavy vehicles from January 2018 to June 2021. The annual breakdown of these accidents is as follows: in 2018, 776 accidents; in 2019, 690; in 2020, 426; and in 2021 up till June this year, 268.

There were 57,639 traffic violations committed by heavy vehicles from January 2018 to June 2021. The annual breakdown of these violations is as follows: in 2018, 19,004; in 2019, 19,449; in 2020, 13,900; and in 2021 up till June, 5,286.

We do not yet have the figures for the third quarter of 2021.

The Traffic Police (TP) does not track if the vehicles involved in accidents were ferrying workers.

TP adopts a three-pronged approach of education, engagement and enforcement to enhance road safety. On the education and engagement front, TP regularly conducts road safety talks to educate heavy vehicle drivers on safe driving habits and holds dialogue sessions with the industry and key stakeholders.

TP is also partnering other Government agencies, such as the Land Transport Authority and the Ministry of Manpower, to monitor the development of suitable technologies that can help discourage speeding and ensure road safety, such as Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). ADAS helps improve the situational awareness of drivers and warns them of collision risks. Today, small and medium enterprises which wish to install ADAS or other vehicular safety technologies on their heavy vehicles can apply for support from the Productivity Solutions Grant, administered by Enterprise Singapore.

That said, we recognise that there will always be errant heavy vehicle drivers who, despite the Government's outreach efforts, continue to drive irresponsibly. TP will take strong enforcement action against these motorists.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I have two supplementary questions. First, can the Minister of State share what are the top three most frequent traffic violations committed by these heavy vehicles. According to MOM's mid-year workplace safety and health statistics, vehicular accidents were the top cause of workplace deaths for the first half of 2021.

In September, I filed a Parliamentary Question to ask about the yearly breakdown of the almost 20,000 speeding violations by lorries in the past five years and found that speeding cases were rising annually up until last year when COVID-19 resulted in a halt to many economic activities. Clearly, employers are putting their workers' lives at risk when ferrying them at the back of lorries especially when some of these lorry drivers have the propensity to speed and it could be down to just sheer luck that there has not been even more fatalities on our roots.

Therefore, I would like to ask whether MHA would reconsider some of my proposals to add a speed limiter to all lorries much as how we have already done in heavy vehicles today and whether there could be a review on having dedicated transport for workers instead of having the workers co-mingle with goods at the back of the lorries.

Sir, I thank the Member for his supplementary questions. With regard to his suggestion about speed limiters as well as the lorries, the Government will bring this back and take a look at these suggestions.

With regard to the breakdown of the top three most frequent traffic violation committed by heavy vehicles, indeed, number one is speeding, number two is red light running and number three is careless driving.