Last September, 18-year-old Goh Pei Ling died in a tragic accident when the Uber car she was riding in got into a horrible collision with a stationary lorry along the Seletar Expressway. It was Singapore’s first fatality (and the only one so far) involving the popular ride-sharing service.
The driver — 22-year-old undergrad Saddam Hussein Norazman — has since been sentenced to six weeks in jail and a five-year driving ban for causing the death of his rear seat passenger and injuring a van driver, reports The New Paper.
Goh’s sister-in-law, who had been five-months pregnant during the time of the incident, fortunately survived the accident. Saddam had both Goh and Chan as his passengers in his Toyota Vios car when he crashed it on the SLE on the early morning of Sept 25 last year.
A lorry and a van had stopped on the left-most lane of the expressway that morning, with the van’s driver Muhammad Shuib Samat getting out of his vehicle to speak with the other party over a motor-related incident. The lorry was parked behind Shuib’s van.
Despite noticing the lorry from three to five car lengths away, Saddam failed to switch his car fully into the middle lane, and crashed into the back of the lorry, Shuib and the van.
Shuib himself was said to have landed on the front windscreen of Saddam’s car. He suffered a broken left arm.
Saddam’s teenage passenger was taken to hospital, where she died several hours later. Chan has since given birth to a baby girl, but is said to still suffer from blurred vision at times due to her injuries.
In court, the prosecution argued that there had been a significant degree of negligence by the former Uber driver, with a high degree of harm in the case. The prosecutor noted that Saddam had about 320m — ample distance — to avoid a collision.
An undergrad of Islamic Law in Jordan, Saddam is said to have been traumatised by the accident, and was not able to sleep nor eat properly as a result of his guilt.
