Young mum helps bring taxi to a stop after driver blacks out on ECP

SINGAPORE: A young mother was forced to stop the cab that she and her young son were riding after the taxi driver lost consciousness while they were on the East Coast Parkway (ECP).

Fortunately, she managed to stop the taxi safely and was helped by a kind passerby so she and her son could alight safely.

The incident left her a bit shaken, she added.

Winnie Lee (@winnie.loves) shared her story in a TikTok video earlier this week, saying that she and her son had come from Jewel Changi Airport and were on their way to Crawford Lane to meet her husband and their other son for lunch.

“Story time of how we survived an accident just now,” the mum said in her July 7 post matter-of-factly, saying that as the cab was driving along the ECP, she observed that the vehicle was already “driving against the road shoulder,” by which she meant that the bushes on the side of the shoulder were already brushing against the windows of the cab.

“So initially I thought, how come they never cut the bushes?” Ms Lee said.

As her next thought was that the cabby had gotten sleepy, she began talking to him, asking him if he was all right.

He told her that he was.

Ms Lee then told him if it was all right to stop the car right there and then, but the man just asked her, “Where do I stop?”

However, just before they reached the slope, the driver became very unresponsive, and Ms Lee said that that was the point she believed he became unconscious, thinking he may have suffered a stroke or had a heart attack.

Her first instinct was to jump out of the car with her son, who looked to be about five or six years old. 

“He was sleeping so he wasn’t traumatised,” Ms Lee said, adding that she forcefully opened the door of the cab on the driver’s side “so that it would create some kind of friction (against the metal divider). Thankfully, the car actually came to a gradual stop.”

When she turned to her son and asked him if he had been scared, he shook his head and said no.

“What were we doing?” she asked.

The young boy said, “Sleeping.”

Then a man, who was passing by, stopped and helped them out of the cab. They then called an ambulance and the police for help.

Ms Lee ended her video saying that she hoped the cabby was all right. /TISG

Read also: Cab driver who killed senior citizen is a 72-year-old who blacked out at the wheel