PMD Rider Arrested After Allegedly Assaulting A Pedestrian

PMD. It’s that 3 letter acronym again.

And that means it’s time to party, y’all!

Here’s a chart from pmd.com showing how much fun you’ll have with those three letters. Look, they rated it even higher than RIDING A WINGED UNICORN.

BEST SHIT EVA. AND PMD IS BETTER THAN THIS?!

Oh, wait. We’re talking the PMD in Singapore and not a random company that happens to also have PMD as an acronym.

Sigh… it’s about Personal Mobility Devices eh. And here I thought we’d be having a fun topic about unicorns.

This case adds one more to the list of black sheep riders who got arrested.

Nov 26: Assault At Yio Chu Kang Road Pedestrian Walkway

Police had received a report on 26 November 2019 from a victim who said he had been assaulted by an unknown man riding a PMD.

What apparently happened was a dispute over the right of way along the pedestrian walkway.

This escalated into assault after the dispute, and the victim suffered injuries to his face.

Not much info is out there on the incident, and the case is still under investigation. Police have already identified the rider as a 24-year-old man and arrested him along Hougang Street 31 on 17 December 2019.

The 24-year-old man can face up to seven years of jail, fine, caning or any combination if convicted.

The question I have is: what kind of arguments were they having which resulted in an assault?

We’ve Had PMD Arrests Before

Just recently, we’ve already got two PMD arrests:

• PMD rider who got arrested for riding PMD on top of shelter
• 19 YO PMD rider arrested for knocking down and injuring 12 YO boy

I’m probably missing more, but the common thread linking the three cases is this: PMD riders were arrested not because of the PMD ban, but because of something they did while possessing a PMD.

Remove the PMD, and the three cases become:

• Man arrested for driving dangerously on top of walkway shelter
• 19 year old arrested for causing injuries to a 12-year-old in a rash act
• 24 year old arrested for hitting random man in the street

My point is that people are assholes and PMD just makes it easier for people to be assholes. I could be wrong about this, but implementing a PMD ban might have made PMD riders feel like they are being treated unfairly and thus more prone to actually committing rash acts.

It’s like when you were a kid and your parents scolded you for something you know you did wrong, but because of angst, you rebelled even harder.

Reminder: Nearly 300 PMD-related Injuries Last Year; 1 In 6 Severe

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said there were 299 people treated at hospitals for PMD-related incidents last year, of which 259 were riders, 8 were pedestrians and some were cyclists.

It’s not to say that there are a lot of PMD injuries; the media coverage for them is definitely much more than the actual numbers. There were 1836 bicycle-related accidents, 5700 motorcycle-related and 6743 car-related.

Why this is significant is because, for the motor-vehicle related accidents, 89% were minor, 7% were moderate and 4% severe. In comparison, for the PMD injuries, 63% were minor, 21% moderate and 16% severe.

Peace out.