Singapore — A 57-year-old man has been sentenced to seven weeks in prison and disqualified from driving for four years after being convicted of driving recklessly along a highway.
Although Hoo Tee Tuan pleaded guilty, he explained that he was speeding in a desperate bid to find a toilet early that morning.
The man had left the Marina Bay Sands casino at about 3 am on March 1, 2019 and was on his way home when he started experiencing abdominal pain and felt the strong urge to go to the toilet.
He started speeding after making a turn from the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) and was spotted by a traffic police officer. The officer turned on his vehicle’s warning light to signal to the defendant to stop but the man ignored the officer and sped off.
The police officer gave chase to the motorist, who was driving at about 180 km/h. During the high-speed chase that stretched across one kilometre, the man also ran two red lights and even stopped and drove in the opposite direction twice.
The defendant then turned into Block 343, Jurong East Street 31, but his way was blocked by a taxi. This enabled the police officer to catch up with him.
The man’s lawyer pleaded that his client had been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome from a year before the incident. He submitted that his client’s act was fuelled by a desperate need to find a toilet and that the man was driving in a rush to reach the toilet at his brother’s 24-hour coffee shop.
The court heard that the defendant was arrested before he reached the toilet and that he soiled his pants in front of the police officer. The officer apparently placed a plastic bag on the back seat of the police car before the man got into the vehicle. /TISG