Singapore's road-safety crackdown is expanding well beyond drink driving. A bill tabled in parliament on July 7 would create a new offense for drivers who deliberately endanger others, sharply raise penalties for careless and dangerous driving causing serious injury, and give traffic police an automated system to process routine camera violations — all while cutting the legal alcohol limit for drivers by more than half.
Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs Sim Ann introduced the Road Traffic (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill against a backdrop of worsening road-safety statistics. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said road fatalities and injuries rose again in 2025, continuing what police described as a persistent upward trend: between 2021 and 2025, the traffic fatality rate climbed about 24%, while traffic violations rose roughly 38%.
A New Offense Targets Drivers Who Weaponize Their Vehicles
The centerpiece of the bill is a new offense of purposeful endangerment using a vehicle, covering drivers who deliberately put another person at risk and cause death or grievous hurt. MHA illustrated the offense with a scenario in which a driver tailgates and repeatedly horns at a motorcyclist to intimidate him, then loses control and fatally collides with the motorcycle — conduct the ministry said reflects genuine culpability even without an intent to kill.
Offenders would not face a murder or culpable homicide charge unless prosecutors could prove beyond reasonable doubt that the driver intended to kill or knew death was a likely outcome. Short of that threshold, those convicted under the new offense could receive a mandatory jail term of up to 15 years, along with caning or a fine, and would generally face a lifetime driving ban — reducible only to a minimum 10-year disqualification if a court finds special reasons to do so. Courts would also gain the power to order forfeiture of the vehicle involved. MHA noted that even non-fatal cases can leave victims with catastrophic injuries, such as traumatic brain damage that leaves them permanently bedbound, which is why the new offense covers grievous hurt as well as death.
Penalties Climb for Dangerous and Careless Driving
Beyond the new offense, the bill raises maximum sentences for existing categories of dangerous and careless driving that cause grievous hurt, bringing them closer to penalties already imposed when such driving causes death. For a first-time offender convicted of dangerous driving causing grievous hurt, the maximum jail term would rise from five years to seven; for repeat offenders, it would climb from 10 years to 13. Maximum penalties for careless driving causing grievous hurt would stay unchanged, at two years for first-time offenders and four years for repeat offenders.
Separate enhancements apply to "serious offenders" — those convicted of dangerous or careless driving causing hurt while also driving under the influence. Under the proposed changes, a serious offender's additional mandatory jail term would rise from one year to 18 months, while a serious repeat offender's additional term would increase from two years to three years and six months.
Alcohol Limits Cut by More Than Half
The bill also lowers the legal alcohol limit for drivers, a change MHA first flagged during the ministry's budget debate in February. The permitted breath-alcohol level would fall from 35 micrograms to 15 micrograms per 100 milliliters, while the blood-alcohol limit would drop from 80 milligrams to 30 milligrams per 100 milliliters — aligning Singapore with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
MHA said there is no universally "safe" number of drinks before driving, since alcohol's effects vary by a person's gender, age, health and body composition, and it urged drivers planning to get behind the wheel to avoid alcohol altogether. As a general guide, the ministry said the new limits work out to roughly one and a half standard drinks for men and no more than one standard drink for women, consumed three hours before driving — with one standard drink defined as a 330-milliliter can of 5%-alcohol beer, a 125-milliliter glass of 12%-alcohol wine, or a 40-milliliter shot of 40%-alcohol liquor.
The ministry also plans to work with the Sentencing Advisory Panel on guidelines that would recommend jail time even for first-time drink-driving offenders whose blood alcohol readings are very high — a departure from current practice, under which most first-time offenders without aggravating factors receive only a fine and a two-year driving ban.
Faster Breath Tests Aim to Close an Evidentiary Gap
To address a long-standing weakness in how evidence is gathered, the bill would let traffic police use a portable handheld breath-evidential analyzer that produces courtroom-ready results immediately at the roadside. Police have been piloting the device since last September. Under the current two-step process, officers conduct a preliminary test at the scene, then transport suspects to a police lock-up for a second, evidential-grade test on bulkier equipment — the only reading currently usable in court. Because time elapses between the two tests, MHA said the lock-up reading can come in lower than a driver's actual alcohol level at the time of driving.
Drug Driving Offense Shifts From Impairment to Presence
The bill separately creates a new offense for driving with detectable levels of controlled drugs or other intoxicating or psychoactive substances in the blood, regardless of the amount found or whether the driver showed any signs of impairment. That marks a shift from current law, which requires prosecutors to prove a driver was actually unfit to control the vehicle — a difficult bar given how differently various substances affect drivers. The covered substances are defined under the Misuse of Drugs Act, the Intoxicating Substances Act and the Tobacco and Vaporisers Control Act. Drivers would not be liable if they took the substance under a legal medical prescription and had no reason to know it could impair their driving; those who are impaired by any drug, including legitimate medication, would remain liable under existing law.
Blood-Sample Rules Shift Focus to Patient Safety
The bill also revises how blood specimens are collected from suspects in hospital care. Current law requires a treating doctor to give explicit authorization, verbal or written, after concluding that drawing blood will not compromise the patient's treatment. Under the proposed change, that explicit sign-off would be replaced with a broader requirement: the medical practitioner or nurse taking the sample, along with anyone instructing or overseeing the procedure, must each be satisfied that doing so will not endanger the patient. MHA said the revision brings the Road Traffic Act in line with other legislation that centers the legal safeguard on patient safety rather than a formal authorization step.
Automated Systems and Delayed Bans Round Out the Changes
Two additional enforcement changes are included in the bill. Traffic police, who process hundreds of thousands of violations a year largely caught on camera, are currently required to manually review every image and identify each vehicle before issuing a notice. The bill would allow an automated decision-making system to assess objectively verifiable violations — such as speeding and red-light offenses that do not depend on a driver's intent — and issue notices without manual review; vehicle owners could still appeal for a human officer to reassess a wrongly identified case.
Separately, the bill would clarify that a driving disqualification only begins once an offender is released from prison, even if that person is jailed for an unrelated offense — closing a gap in how bans currently interact with prison sentences.
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