The punishment has no bite. Even when the defendant has previous convictions.
A private chef, who used to be in the cooking duo called The Funky Chefs, was sentenced on Friday to a month in jail for driving negligently and causing the death of a motorcyclist on an expressway in 2009.
Melvyn Lee Shang Bin was also fined $2,500 for endangering the life of a passenger of the car he sideswiped in the same accident.
The 26-year-old was further disqualified from driving for five years. He is appealing against both conviction and sentence.
During the eight-day trial, a district court heard that Lee was driving his father's orange Nissan Murano on the right lane of the four-lane East Coast Parkway on Oct 18, 2009, when he veered towards the left and side-swiped a white car on the next lane.
The impact sent his car over the central divider onto the other side of the expressway going in the opposite direction, hitting motorcyclist Muhammad Farhan Kassim, 26, and causing his death.
Prosecution witness Tan Chye Seng was in a taxi travelling behind the white Toyota. He said that both vehicles were going at about 90kmh when he saw another car zoom past and 'in the blink of an eye' catch up with the white car in front and collide with it.
The Toyota spun out of control and the Murano veered to the right and 'literally fly over the central divider', said Mr Tan, 72, a conveyancing clerk.
He and other witnesses also said that the Toyota was travelling steady in its lane at all times before the collision.
Lee's defence was that it was the Toyota that caused the accident by veering into his path.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Yang Ziliang had asked for a jail term of at least a month for Lee because of chef's poor driving record.
In 2006, he had been fined for careless driving and had been disqualified from driving for 2 1/2 years for drink-driving.
He had committed the latest offence barely four months after he regained his driving licence, the prosecutor said.
