Written Reply by Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan to Parliamentary Question on Driver Assistance Technologies to Make Our Roads Safer

Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Transport whether his Ministry will review driver assistance technologies such as intelligent speed assistance, drowsiness and attention detection, lane-keeping assistance and event data recorders that have the potential to make our roads safer and to assess their implementation in Singapore.

Reply by Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan:

1.     The Land Transport Authority (LTA) believes in leveraging technology to improve road safety. For instance, our public buses have since 2014 been progressively fitted with safety features such as Driver Anti-Fatigue systems to monitor their fatigue level, and Collision Warning Systems to alert them of impending collisions. LTA will continue to work with industry partners and other government agencies to look out for, assess and adopt new technologies, if they prove effective, and when they become commercially available.

2.     Improving road safety is a collective effort. While technology helps, user behaviour is also important. The situation here is improving. Over the past five years, the number of fatal road traffic accidents has dropped by more than 20%. There are also fewer road traffic accidents resulting in injuries. But we should strive to eliminate road traffic accidents.