Established in 1999

Continued from FrontPage of Article

TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT

Total Summonses Issued

Enforcement efforts have also been stepped up in 2007, registering an increase from 350,125 to 417,734 summonses issued for moving, parking and pedestrian offences. Table 3 shows the total number of summonses issued for 2007 as compared to 2006.

Drink Driving Arrests

There were 3,447 drivers/riders arrested for drink driving (non-accident cases) in 2007, representing an increase of 295 arrests from 3,152 arrests made in 2006. For drink driving-related accidents, there were 562 drivers/riders arrested in 2007 as compared to 581 in 2006.

Red-Running Offences

As compared to 2006, the total number of summonses issued for red-running violations in 2007 had increased by 11,247 summonses, rising from 13,020 summonses issued in 2006 to 24,267 summonses in 2007.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Speeding

There was an overall increase in the number of speed-related accidents, from 1,656 to 1,766 cases in 2007, with the number of speed-related fatal accidents increasing by 8 cases, from 66 to 74. More than 1 in 3 of all fatal accidents were speed-related. Table 4 indicates the number of speed-related accidents 2007 compared with 2006.

Accidents Involving Motorcyclists and Pillion Riders

The number of fatalities for motorcyclists and pillion riders rose by 1, from 102 in 2006 to 103 in 2007. The proportion of overall motorcyclist fatalities as a percentage of all road user groups has fallen by 6.7% from 2006 to 2007, with motorcyclists and pillion riders forming the bulk of all fatalities in 2007.

Table 5 shows the number of fatalities by road user categories.

Drink Driving-Related Accidents

The number of drink driving-related accidents fell from 288 in 2006 to 188 in 2007, a decrease of 100 cases. The number of persons killed in drink driving-related accidents also decreased from 25 to 15. Similarly, the number of persons injured in such accidents decreased from 336 to 263 in 2007. Of these, 7 suffered serious injuries. Appended in Tables 6 and 7 are the number of drink driving accident cases and persons killed/injured for 2007 and 2006 respectively.

For 2007, more persons were arrested for drink driving, from 3,733 persons in 2006 to 4,009 in 2007. Table 8 shows the number of persons arrested.

THE WAY FORWARD

Public Education

Traffic Police (TP) works closely with our strategic partners and the community to promote road safety awareness and influence road user behaviour through our various public education outreach programmes. Regular large-scale campaigns such as the Road Courtesy Campaign, Road Safety Outreach, Annual Shell Traffic Games and the Anti-Drink-Driving (ADD) campaign helped reinforce the importance of road safety. All in all, about 1,284 talks, exhibitions and outreach sessions were conducted last year. TP will further enhance our educational efforts to drive home road safety messages.

Motorcyclists

As motorcyclist fatalities remain an area of concern, the Motorcycle Task Force (MTF) was formed by TP to study the issue of motorcycle fatalities; and develop and implement strategies that would reduce such fatalities. Apart from enforcement actions, the MTF has launched the Ride Safe campaign that is specially targeted at motorcyclists on the importance of practicing safe riding habits. TP has also been working with members of motorcycle clubs to give road safety talks to young riders at ITE and polytechnics. The MTF will continue to monitor and fine-tune our efforts to further bring down motorcycle fatalities and injuries.

Speeding

Speeding continues to be an area of concern as well. TP will continue to step up enforcement against speedsters. In addition, TP will continue to leverage on technologies to deter and detect speeding violations.

Drink Driving

The significant rise in drink-driving arrests is a worrying trend – recording a 7% rise from 3,733 cases in 2006, to 4,009 cases in 2007. The total number of drink-driving cases in 2007 has also been the highest for the last 10 years. This is largely contributed by a 9% increase in the number of drivers who were detected for drink-driving in non-accident cases. Non-accident cases have the potential to become accident cases, resulting in injuries and even deaths to drivers and other innocent road users.

TP will be taking a tougher approach in dealing with those who drink and drive. We will be enhancing our enforcement strategy by deploying road blocks around entertainment outlets to detect drink drivers. The ring-fencing strategy entails grouping entertainment outlets such as pubs, discotheques and nightclubs, as well as coffee shops and food centres, into various clusters based on accident statistics and/or ground feedback to apprehend drink drivers. All possible egress routes from each of these clusters will be identified. During a typical 'ring-fencing' operation, road blocks will be set up along all the egress routes, resulting in virtually 100% checks on all motorists leaving the cluster area. TP will vary the timings and areas of operation.

TP will continue to work with entertainment outlet operators to spread the anti-drink driving message and to provide services such as arranging for taxis to take drunk patrons home. We will also urge the operators to help screen their patrons who drink beyond the legal limit, and advise them not to drive. In order to drive home the Anti-Drink Drive message, especially amongst young drivers, TP also worked with polytechnic students to set up the Students Against Drink Driving (SADD) website that uses new media to reach out to fellow students on the dangers of drink driving. An Anti-Drink Driving (ADD) pledge was also written to advocate and promote anti-drink driving behaviour.

Singapore is seeing a growing drinking culture – market intelligence surveys indicate that alcohol consumption in Singapore is on the rise. TP is not against drinking per se - it is the irresponsible patrons who choose to take the risk of driving after drinking that calls for tougher action on the part of TP.

CONCLUSION

With the expected increase in the vehicle and human populations as well as economic activities, our roads are likely to get busier. It is thus important that the society at large sees the criticality of road safety and to adopt a mindset of zero-tolerance towards irresponsible road usage behaviours – be it jaywalking, speeding, reckless driving or drink-driving.

While our fatality rate of 4.68 is comparable to other major cities, we can make our roads safer. TP cannot achieve this without the strong support of the public and road users. Motorists should pay special attention to vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Others can play their part by advising friends or family members to be responsible road users and to refrain from dangerous driving habits such as speeding, drink-driving and reckless driving. The bottomline is, all road users should exercise more care, caution and consideration at all times. Road safety is everyone’s responsibility. Together, we can make travelling on our roads a safer experience for one and all.

Source:  www.mha.gov.sg News Release 11 Jan 2008

ABOUT THIS WEB SITE | ADVERTISING WITH US | LISTING WITH US

ePartners  | Press  |  eMail Us | Permissions | Content Contributors

Copyright©   All rights reserved