Taskforce formed to develop road safety initiatives for vocational drivers.

A Safer Roads Industry Taskforce has been formed to develop road safety initiatives for vocational drivers.

Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs Masagos Zulkifli announced that the committee will look into areas like training and education to help drivers drive in a safer manner.

He said this at the launch of an Anti-Drink Drive campaign on Thursday evening.

2,330 motorists were arrested for drink-driving between January and September this year.

This is up nearly 9 per cent over the same period last year.

Last year, there were 2,145 motorists arrested over the same period. For the first nine months of this year, there were 88 drink-driving-related accidents, which resulted in 16 deaths.

At the event on Thursday, four companies were recognised for promoting a road safety culture among their drivers.

SembWaste won the Merit award for putting in place several programmes.

One of them is an incentive scheme where drivers who work for two or more years without any accidents get cash vouchers of up to S$300.

Kelvin Liew, assistant vice president (collection) at SembWaste, said: "Road safety has a very important first priority in our company. And we also build this in as part of our culture.

"Overall, all these initiatives and programmes have been very effective. In the last three years alone, we actually have been able to reduce the accident rate frequency by 43 per cent."

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