Driver abandons car and flees on foot after Jurong chain collision, sparking mystery

The accident at Jurong Town Hall Road was shocking.

A speeding white Honda Odyssey suddenly swerves from the middle lane to the fast lane and slams into the rear of a motorcycle.

The impact sends the biker flying into the air before landing heavily on his back.

The Honda then rams into the rear of the car in front, which hits a van. The Honda then veers right and crashes through the central divider railing, causing it to hit another car.

The Honda eventually stops in the middle of the road on the other side.

The accident last Friday was caught on video by the rear in-vehicle camera of the car hit by the Honda.

What happened next was mystifying. Though it was not captured on video, witnesses said the Honda driver, described as dark-skinned, crawled out of the wrecked car and fled on foot.

It seemed a strange thing to do as the police would have been able to track down his identity and address from the licence plate number of the abandoned car.

The police did exactly that but instead of solving the mystery, it only deepened it.

The injured biker's brother-in-law, Mr Bernard Ho, told The New Paper yesterday that the police had informed him that the registered owner with the number plate of the Honda did not match the description of the man who had run away.

Acting on a tip-off, TNP tracked down the previous owner of a Honda Odyssey with that number plate. He said the car he sold early this year looked different from the one involved in the accident.

A car dealer, SG Cash n Cars, also posted on Facebook yesterday that it had sold a Honda Odyssey with that number plate in March but noted several differences between the two cars.

The post reads: "More than meets the eye, the car we sold was not white but silver in colour! And other details are different... Those with sharp eyes can tell the difference."

One obvious detail: The white Honda has a sunroof, but not the silver Honda.

BRAZEN

Was that why the driver was so brazen in leaving the scene of the accident, confident that the vehicle registration details would not reveal his identity?

All that remains to be answered pending investigations, which the police said are ongoing.

Confirming the incident, their spokesman said: "Police received a call on July 31 at about 4.38pm, informing us of an accident along Jurong Town Hall Road.

"It was established that an accident involving a van, a motorcycle and three cars had occurred."

Mr Ho, a 32-year-old engineer, said he went to the scene after hearing of the accident.

"I rushed down and managed to get the video from one of the drivers involved in the accident, but the Honda driver was nowhere to be found," he said.

Witnesses told him they saw the driver making his getaway on foot, he added.

"Not captured in the video is the male driver crawling out of his car from the passenger's seat as the driver's air bag had been activated," he said.

"He was on his phone and walked slowly towards the Creative Technology building before running away, abandoning his car in the middle of the road."

His 29-year-old brother-in-law was taken conscious with back injuries by the Singapore Civil Defence Force to the National University Hospital.

Mr Ho, who posted the video of the accident on YouTube on Tuesday, said his brother-in-law was discharged yesterday - after five days in hospital undergoing numerous scans and recovering from his injuries.

A person by the name of Karen Tan posted on the Singapore Police Force's Facebook page that her husband was driving the car that was hit by the Honda.

She said the investigating officer told her husband on Tuesday that they had yet to identify the Honda driver.

Lawyer James Ow Yong, from Kalco Law LLC, watched the videos and said the Honda driver had committed at least two offences - reckless or dangerous driving and leaving the accident scene.

He said: "Hit-and-run is commonly understood as leaving the scene of an accident. The offences and punishment range in severity from cases involving only damage to property to those involving injury or even death to persons."

Under the Road Traffic Act, reckless or dangerous driving carries a maximum fine or $3,000 or jail for up to a year, or both.

Failure to stop after an accident and failure to render assistance where injury is serious carries a maximum fine of $3,000 or jail for up to a year, or both, and disqualification from driving for at least a year.

davidsun@sph.com.sg 

This article was first published on Aug 06, 2015.
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