People Are Still Offering Carpooling Service in Telegram Despite Ban During Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)

Carpooling is a great way for passengers to save some moolah and for drivers to earn some moolah.

Aside from that, do you know what carpools are great for?

Spreading COVID-19.

People Are Still Offering Carpooling Service in Telegram Despite Ban During Phase 2 (HA)

Despite the recently tightened COVID-19 measures, and the rising community cases, some members of the public are still making arrangements with strangers through Telegram to tompang them.

A simple check online today (23 May) and you’d see offers like these:

How this system work is:

1. They join the Telegram Car Hitch group and post their pick-up and desired location there.
2. The drivers will message them privately to work out a price or if the driver is feeling generous, they’ll give them a ride for free.

On normal days, this is a normal practice but in these tremulous times, this practice is widely disapproved. Hitching a ride with various strangers, meant that there would be a number of passengers from different households sharing a car with the driver and without safe distancing.

According to Land Transport Authority (LTA), “medium such as Telegram’s SG Hitch, continues to be disallowed as such car-pooling trips do not have proper records for contact tracing when required”.

Contact tracing is especially important when it comes to fighting the virus.

Dr Ling Li Min, an infectious disease physician from Rophi Clinic, said, “Travelling with others from the general public is risky.

“Being in a confined space and sitting in close proximity to others for a prolonged period of time increases the risk of being infected if someone has a Covid infection.”

Why is travelling in a normal taxi or in the MRT allowed then? The difference between public transportation, taxis and private hire vehicles is their contact tracing capabilities like scanning of safe entry codes or the recording of one’s personal details.

“This will make it difficult to trace or isolate potential Covid cases and their contacts should the need arise, which can lead to more transmission and more clusters,” Dr Ling added.

Telegram groups such as SG Hitch and Singapore Secret Students Free Hitch have over 69,000 members and 1,800 members respectively.

The number of people looking for rides ranged from tens to hundreds daily. For paid rides, each ride can charge up to S$12 to S$15 depending on the location you’re heading to.

Carpooling Not Allowed

Previously, privately arranged carpooling services were allowed and they could offer just two such rides a day.

However, LTA banned all of such services on 16 April 2020 during the circuit breaker due to contact tracing and safe distancing concerns.

These services are banned during Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) as well.

According to LTA, “LTA will disallow all forms of commercial car-pooling services such as GrabHitch and RydePool.

“Non-commercial car-poling trips are only permitted among friends or colleagues if the prevailing permissible group size of two people is adhered to.”

If the drivers decided to ignore the law and continue with these services, they can be prosecuted under the Road Traffic Act and the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation Act). They also can be fined a maximum of S$3,000, or be jailed for up to six months, or both.

Previously, a man was caught for providing illegal carpooling services during the circuit breaker period.

He was caught after he picked up his two “passengers” who turned out to be LTA officers.

You can read the full story here.

Featured Image: Vigen M / Shutterstock.com