Public Prosecutor v Ng Yat Chye @ Mohd Emran Bin Abdullah

• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Judge: Christopher Goh Eng Chiang
• Judgment Date: 18 January 2001
• Neutral Citation: [2001] SGDC 17
• Citation: [2001] SGDC 17
• Published date: 19 September 2003

JUDGMENT:

Grounds of Decision

1. The accused claimed trail to one charge for speeding under section 63(1) of the Road Traffic Act, Cap 276. The charge is set out below ;

1^st Charge

" that you, Ng Yat Chye @ Mohd Emran B Abdullah, are charged that you on 16^th November 1999 at about 12.54 am along Pan Island Expressway in the direction of Jurong Road, Singapore, did drive lorry No. YH3906D at a speed of 123kmph, such speed being in excess of the imposed speed limit of 50kmph of the vehicle and you have thereby committed an offence under section 63(1) and punishable under section 131(1)(a) of the Road Traffic Act, Cap 276"

THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION

i

. Evidence of PW1

2. PW1 is one SSG Zulkan s/o Ali Hassan attached to the Surveillance Camera Unit, Traffic Police. He confirmed that the speed camera along the Pan Island Expressway (PIE), 22 km mark, in the direction of Jurong was loaded on 9 November 1999 at 12.25 pm and unloaded on 16 November 1999 at 11.04 am.

3. PW1 confirmed that exhibit P2 was the photograph taken by the said camera. He then interpreted the numbers on the photographs. The number "1999" indicated the year, "9009 the camera code, "123" the vehicle speed, "16" and "11" the date and month respectively which the photograph was taken and "05405" indicating the time (i.e. 0054 hrs and 5 secs). Therefore, the photo, as interpreted by PW1, shows that the vehicle was travelling at 123 kmph on 16 November 1999 at 12.54 am along the said stretch of the road

ii

. Evidence of PW2

4. PW2 is W/SSG Esah Bte Dolah, the investigation officer. She ascertained during the course of investigations that the speed limit of the vehicle, YH5906D in the photograph was 50 kmph.

iii

. Evidence of PW3

5. PW3 is SSG Abdul Rashid attached to the Traffic Police. He had ascertained that the owner of the vehicle was the Singapore Turf Club (STC). The STC provided the particulars of the person who was driving the vehicle that evening as being one Ng Yat Chye @ Mohd Emran B Abdullah who resided in at B348 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3.

iv

. Evidence of PW4

6. PW4 is one Lim Tian Pong who is a technician by training and runs his own company. His business consists of installing, repairing and servicing speed cameras in Singapore. He is thus familiar with the technical aspect of the speed cameras used by the Traffic Police. He had been trained in Switzerland on this equipment. In addition, he also had three months of local training from the manufacturers of the cameras, Multinova in all aspects of the system.

7. Mr Lim emphaised that the actual camera is just one component of the whole system. The system has a pre-determined speed limit (e.g. 80 kmph or 90 kmph as the case may be). The system will only capture an offending vehicle on film if it exceeds this preset limit and not the speed limit of the vehicle.

8. Once a vehicle is detected travelling at a speed above the preset limit for a distance of at least 2 metres, the system will conduct a self test taking 0.2 seconds. The system then determines the speed of the vehicle. Once this is done, the system will re-confirm the speed. Mr Lim also informed the Court that the system employs 2 separate methods to confirm and re-confirm the speed of a moving vehicle. Once this speed has been re-confirmed, the camera takes a photo of the speeding vehicle and the relevant information is then superimposed on the photograph.

9. Mr Lim also gave evidence that if a vehicle is detected exceeding the speed limit, and a second vehicle enters the systems range and interferes in the determination of the 1^st vehicles speed and the system detects an error of more than 3%, a photograph will not be taken. If this error is less than 3%, a photograph of both vehicles will be taken. The...