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Why only sacked? He should be charged for the offence by Traffic too!
SINGAPORE - An SMRT bus driver has been fired for watching a movie on his tablet late last month while driving.
In an e-mail reply, a spokesman for the transport operator said: "SMRT takes this incident seriously.
"We have investigated the matter and found the service leader to be at fault, and he has since been dismissed from the company."
It is understood that the driver was sacked early last week.
My Paper reported on Dec 27 that SMRT was investigating the matter. Four days earlier, a photograph was posted on citizen-journalism website Stomp, showing the driver with a tablet propped up against the windscreen.
The incident took place on Service 188 on Dec 22, said undergraduate Amanda Tan, who snapped the photo and sent it to Stomp.
Ms Tan, 24, told My Paper that the device was playing "an animated film in English" and that she could hear the dialogue from her seat near the front. The film continued to play throughout the 10 to 15 minutes that she was on board, she added.
SMRT had said that its drivers are "not allowed to use any form of communication devices, or any other devices that will distract and reduce their ability to control the bus and react to changes in road situations" while driving.
In a separate incident last month, transport operator ComfortDelGro sacked a taxi driver who watched a video on his mobile phone while ferrying a passenger. The driver had placed the phone on his dashboard and the passenger saw that the video had explicit sex scenes.
Watching a video on a mobile phone while driving is an offence under the Road Traffic Act, and motorists can be fined up to $1,000, jailed up to six months or both.
