Written Reply to Parliamentary Question on Number of Accidents Involving Injuries or Deaths of Children Below the Age of 18 in the Past Four Years

Question:

Mr Don Wee: To ask the Minister for Home Affairs with regard to road accidents involving injuries or deaths of children below the age of 18 (a) how many of such accidents were there respectively in each year of the last four years; (b) what are the main causes; and (c) in how many areas have improved road safety features been installed after reviews conducted by the Ministry following these accidents.

Answer:

Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law:

1. The figures that the Member requested are in Table 1. We have also provided figures between 2017 and 2019 in Table 2 to show a longer time trend.

2. While the total number of injury and fatal accidents involving children below the age of 18 increased in 2023, it was lower compared to pre-pandemic figures in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Table 1: Number of fatal and injury accidents involving children below the age of 18 (2020 - 2023)

Table 2: Number of fatal and injury accidents involving children below the age of 18 (2017 - 2019)

3. The main causes of the accidents were motorist faults, such as failure to keep a proper lookout of the road situation; failure to have proper control of the vehicle; and failure to give way to other traffic which has the right of way.

4. The Land Transport Authority had done an assessment of the fatal accident locations between 2020 and 2023. Seven of them were further enhanced with road safety features such as installing a hump, warning signs and road markings to slow down and alert road users to look out for pedestrians. The other locations were assessed to be adequately safe or the accidents at these locations were attributed to human behaviour.