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Former actor Edmund Chen gets five-day jail term cut to one day on appeal over traffic accident
The court found that the five-day sentence was manifestly excessive and that the lower court judge had not considered the mitigating factors.
Edmund Chen arrives at the High Court on Jul 20, 2026. (Photo: CNA/Ili Mansor)
Lydia Lam
20 Jul 2026 12:08PM(Updated: 20 Jul 2026 12:28PM)SINGAPORE: Former local actor Edmund Chen on Monday (Jul 20) had his five-day jail term for injuring a motorcyclist in a collision cut to one day after a partially successful appeal.
Justice Hri Kumar Nair found the sentence handed down by a lower court to be manifestly excessive, saying that the district judge may have overstated the number of relevant harm and culpability factors, and did not appear to have given enough weight to mitigating factors.
He said Chen did all he could reasonably do after the collision, stopping his car promptly, rendering assistance to the victim and cooperating with authorities.
The five-year driving ban still stands.
Chen, named in court papers as Tan Kai Yuan, had slowed down abruptly on an expressway such that a motorcyclist collided with him, sustaining fractures.
Chen switched lawyers and launched the appeal after the judge imposed a jail term as he did not agree with a fine as sought by both the prosecution and defence.
Mr Abraham Vergis, who argued for the maximum fine for Chen on Monday, was the third lawyer to be hired for the case.
The lower court judge said there was a "high degree of carelessness" and a sustained period of inattention in Chen's actions, and that he was "deliberately cavalier about certain mitigable risks".
Chen, a 64-year-old Singaporean, had pleaded guilty to one count of driving a vehicle without reasonable consideration for other road users, resulting in grievous hurt.
APPEAL ARGUMENTS
Mr Vergis called for the maximum fine of S$5,000 to replace the five-day jail term, taking the court through dashcam footage of the incident and refuting observations made by District Judge Shawn Ho.Judge Ho said Chen's filtering and allowing a car to pass him before filtering sharply showed a "sustained period of inattention".
Mr Vergis argued that it was not clear to him how this amounted to a sustained period of inattention. If anything, the fact that Chen slowed down and engaged his right indicator shows that he was paying close attention to the movement of traffic.
Justice Hri Kumar agreed with Mr Vergis and said the description "sustained period of inattention" did not quite describe what happened in the video.
Mr Vergis said "we shouldn't be slicing and dicing" Chen's actions to say that crossing over is one infraction and going over the chevron marking is a second one, when they are "one and the same".
Justice Hri Kumar said he had difficulty with how the statement of facts did not make certain things clear that were clear in the dashcam footage.
Instead, the statement of facts gives a different impression of what happened from the dashcam footage, and the lower court judge appeared to convey the same impression as well.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Ben Mathias maintained the prosecution's position of seeking a high fine, up to the maximum.
However, he said the jail term imposed was not manifestly excessive because the case fell within a band which allowed the five-day jail term.
He said the five-day jail term is not "so far apart" from the high fine sought by the prosecution as to be an error.
He added that this was a "borderline case" and that a person applying the appropriate framework would get a result in the range of a high fine or a jail term.
"While the judge landed on a slightly higher side of that spectrum, we're saying he didn't commit an error, because he applied the framework properly," said Mr Tan.
He also showed a list of Chen's past traffic violations, which include speeding, failing to conform to a red-light signal, parking offences and using his phone while driving.
"We can't say that aside from this incident and the latest incident in October 2013, there's a long and unblemished record," said Mr Tan.
THE CASE
Chen had driven along Ayer Rajah Expressway towards the direction of Central Expressway at about noon on Mar 4, 2025.He was on lane 4 of the four-lane road and intended to drive towards an expressway via lanes 1 and 2 but did not move into the correct lanes in time.
By the time he realised this, he was already headed towards a split road leading to Keppel Road.
He tried to enter the second lane by braking abruptly such that his car slowed down and almost came to a complete stop.
The victim, a 21-year-old motorcyclist, was in the fourth lane behind Chen. He was unable to swerve to avoid Chen's car and collided with the rear left portion of the vehicle.
When the collision occurred, Chen was filtering across the third lane and across the white chevron markings, which is a breach of traffic regulations. After the accident, he stopped his car and helped the victim, who was taken to hospital.
As a result of the accident, the motorcyclist's front headlamp was dislodged and cracked, and the right side of his motorcycle was also scratched.
The victim sustained multiple fractures in his right hand and wrist and underwent surgery. He was given 99 days' hospitalisation leave but suffered no permanent injury.
For driving without due consideration for other road users, resulting in grievous hurt, Chen could have been jailed for up to two years, fined up to S$5,000, or both.
Source: CNA/ll(ss)
