On 8 October, at about 9.20 am, a Singapore Prison Service (SPS) bus collided with a private car at a traffic junction between Simei Street 1 and Simei Street 3, heading towards Changi General Hospital.
The SPS bus, which was carrying inmates and officers on their way to medical appointments at Changi General Hospital, continued driving without stopping.
The police are currently investigating the incident after the private car driver lodged a complaint about the hit-and-run.
Brief Impact near Changi General Hospital
At 12.35 pm on 9 October, the dashcam footage of the incident was uploaded to the SG Road Vigilante Facebook Page, where the left side of the bus appeared to slice off a small black object from the car.
In their post, they claimed that while waiting to make a U-turn, they heard “a knocking sound from the left side of his car”, saw the SPS bus pass by, and realised that their left side mirror was damaged.
As the SPS bus did not stop, the private car driver then gave chase and caught up to it at the emergency services loading area at Changi General Hospital.
As he couldn’t get close to the bus and driver, he approached a female traffic police officer nearby who advised him to make a police report instead.
SPS took to Facebook at around the same time to confirm the accident, acknowledging that “the right side of the SPS vehicle made an impact with the left side of a private car which was travelling on the lane next to the SPS vehicle.”
According to SPS, their standard protocols require drivers to stop and assess for any damages and injuries. However, in this case, the driver and any accompanying staff failed to stop the bus and instead continued on to CGH, about 400m away.
SPS also confirmed that they reached out to the private car driver and are cooperating fully with the police.
The Online Blame Game
While some netizens were sympathetic to the private car driver, other eagle-eyed commenters were quick to point out that maybe the private car driver was to blame.
To avoid hitting the kerb, most drivers lean a little to the left of the lane when they’re about to make a U-turn.
But many netizens are pointing out that the driver leaned way too left and that the SPS bus was perfectly within its lane.
In the rear camera footage posted, you can see that the SPS bus was travelling within its own lane, with sufficient space to its left and right, right before the point of impact.
Many commenters who picked this up then shifted the blame onto the driver, accusing him of “bad lane positioning” and making a fuss over his own error.
One commenter even suggested that it wasn’t possible to make a U-turn at the junction, implying that the driver wasn’t being honest about the situation.
Even if the driver was a little too far left in his lane, the SPS bus should have still stopped and addressed the issue instead of simply driving off.
Some commenters on the SPS post, however, have called for leniency for the driver, suggesting that the driver might not have felt the impact at all, given the size of the bus.
While it may be easy to pin the blame on either party, at the end of the day, this just seems like an unfortunate accident.
After all, that’s what car insurance is for.
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