Singapore might not be a country that springs readily to mind when thinking about an effective fight against distracted driving but they have an excellent way to combat cell phone use by drivers.
Singaporean police officers take possession of the offending drivers’ phones, remove the SIM card and give that back to the driver in question, then seize the phone… end of story.
This is in addition to any subsequent punishments in court and certainly can’t be accused of being ineffective.
Read the full enforcement article.
RoadSafety USA – offering Singapore as an example for anything is not good.
Would not work in the USA as we have protections against unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. – https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unreasonable_search_and_seizure
SIngapore is seen globally has having a very poor human rights reputation – including canings and other corporal punishments for minor infractions.
Mr. Vanderlek, clearly there is more than one argument at play here. When you say that “offering Singapore as an example for anything is not good,” a critical point is that the USA, for decades, has consistently had one of the highest/worst rates of road death among all developed countries in the world, and it is our suggestion that this country could save over 27,000 American lives each year, simply by adopting best-practise techniques from the leading nations. And in this context, while it is not an argument we wish to get into, some of America’s ‘rights’ laws act against the saving of lives in road crashes.
As for “Singapore [being] seen globally has having a very poor human rights reputation,” then this is a topic outside our own road safety remit, but with respect it is a well-known fact that America’s continued use of executions earns this country that same reputation on the global stage.
We do not give these responses to create or prolong an argument, merely to make the point that, in our opinion, they are not directly related to the traffic safety issue.