You could say this family of five is a punter’s dream when it comes to buying 4D.

Friends of the Loke family call them the “number family” because of their unique birthdates, which consist of repeated numbers.

Mr Sharmen Loke, 38, was born on Jan 1.

His wife, Madam Yau Mei Siong, 37, was born on Sept 9.

Eldest son Lucius, five, was born on June 6, whereas second son Andrius, two, was also born on Jan 1.

And just two weeks ago, their youngest son, Justinius, was born on April 4.

The couple, who are both civil servants, said their sons were delivered via natural birth and they did not induce their births on specific dates.

Madam Yau’s gynaecologist, Dr Ben Neo of Ben Neo Clinic for Women, confirmed this, saying it was the first time he had seen something like this.

Mr Loke and his wife met when they were studying at the School of Design & Environment at the National University of Singapore. They got married in 2006.

To Mr Loke, these repeated numbers make his family unique.

He told The New Paper: “I feel very blessed… The numbers are special and this is a story we can tell future generations of our family.”

Madam Yau added jokingly that this coincidence is “even better than winning the lottery”.

According to Singapore Pools, the Lokes’ birthdate numbers have won several times, with the combination ‘0909’ striking, well, nine times since 1988.

Yet, Mr Loke has never bought 4-D because he has no interest in gambling.

However, he said his father struck three times over the last five years with the combination ‘1199’. The biggest win was several thousand dollars.

Mr Loke added that he does not seek out these numbers in his everyday life.

The only coincidence was when he bought his first motorcycle in 2011. The licence plate that was assigned to him had the numbers ’96’ – ‘9’ for Madam Yau’s birthdate and ‘6’ for Lucius’.

Coincidentally, the number ’96’ appeared again for the licence plate of his second motorcycle. So when he bought his third bike, he bid and got the same number again.

LICENCE PLATE

Five years ago, when he bought a Suzuki Grand Vitara, he bid and got the licence plate number ‘1199’ – ‘1’ for his birthdate and ‘9’ for his wife’s.

So does he plan to expand his number pool with more children?

Mr Loke said: “No, we had only planned to have three kids. When Justinius’ birthday was also a repeated number, we felt this was a sign of closure.”

He admitted it is easier for him to never forget a family member’s birthday, but “who would forget their children’s or wife’s birthday, right?”

This article was first published on April 18, 2016.
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At a time when cities are going car-lite for environmental reasons, it may be a blessing in disguise for developing countries that have yet to build their road and highway infrastructure.

This is because they have the opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the more advanced countries. Now, they can move directly into a car-lite, road-lite transport system, and leapfrog a whole era of car-driven environment degradation, said Gabe Klein, special venture partner at venture capital firm Fontinalis Partners. Mr Klein recently spoke to The Business Times.

The entrepreneur, author, investor and former government transport official in Chicago and Washington DC, was in Singapore at the invitation of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to facilitate a workshop with public and private stakeholders on creating car-lite cities. This included speaking at a lecture organised by ULI and the Centre for Liveable Cities, which was attended by 80 participants from the public and private sectors and academia.

Speaking to BT after the lecture, he said: “The problem is we get so focused on technology, and it’s great that we have all this technology that we can use, but looking back at earlier times, perhaps we had some things right.

“Perhaps in simpler times when people primarily walked and cycled and took more rudimentary forms of transit – and I’m not saying as you scale up, you don’t want to improve your systems, because you do – but we’ve used the idea of technology to build horrible monstrosities of freeways and cities.”

Mr Klein vehemently believes in a utopian city in the future where traditional cars and roads have all but given way to sidewalks and bicycle paths, and people live in dense communities and work remotely, which minimises the need for travelling.

Every way he puts it, driving is bad – for the environment, for pedestrian safety, even for people’s health and fitness. “It will kill you, your city, the air quality, the value of real estate, it will make people unhealthy and fat,” he said plainly.

What has been the typical trajectory in many rapidly urbanising countries is that cities quickly become car-oriented, partly also because people see car ownership as a sign of affluence. “You see people in China and India wanting to have a car if the Americans do. Then they realise it’s a mistake and they build transit, or a confluence of transit, roads and highways. That’s where Singapore is.”

Singapore is in the midst of going car-lite as well, in the footsteps of its Western peers. It is discouraging car ownership through high costs and taxes, ramping up its public bus and rail systems, encouraging cycling as a mode of transport to work, decentralising offices, and studying car-sharing schemes as well as the feasibility of driverless pods.

“We’ve made a tremendous amount of mistakes in the Western world, and a lot of other countries have copied our mistakes, including China. The price they face now is pollution and congestion,” Mr Klein said.

Referring to a chart in his presentation (top right), he said: “So if you are in a country that is at the beginning of the curve, jump to here (City C), don’t go through the curve of mistakes. It’s a really important lesson. You’ll waste billions of dollars making the mistakes.”

Another mistake that many major cities have made is to create the concept of a downtown – where people work – and the suburbs – where people live.

This has resulted in droves of people mass-commuting across cities at peak hours of the day – something which didn’t happen in the past because people had tended to live close to where they worked.

He said: “So what we fundamentally have are challenges of land use. If we have the right land use and the right density, the right services and amenities, and the ability to work close to where we live as we did 100 years ago, perhaps we don’t need the advanced transportation system. Just a simple one that focuses on walking, cycling, some high quality transit to link our neighbourhoods and cities.”

He continued: “We have gone from this era of hyper consumption in post World War II to people really being more concerned about a higher quality of life by being able to walk, bike, take transit within 5-10 minutes to everywhere they want and not necessarily feeling the need to own everything.

“In transportation, we are really moving from the ‘me’ economy to the ‘we’ economy.”

And new business models are springing up – be it private-hire and limousine services such as GrabCar and Uber, or shared car ownership initiatives such as Zipcar.

He said: “The innovation is happening at private-sector speed, meaning the profits are driving it. And when you take that and combine it with the exponential rate of change in technology, you can see this (the disappearance of cars from roads) is going to happen very, very fast, before the end of this decade.”

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said this could take effect in Singapore as early as 2030.

Meanwhile, there has been debate in Singapore about whether the privatisation of public transport has led to its demise, as profit-maximising operators cut down on maintenance works to reduce costs.

To that end, the government is reportedly studying options for rail operator SMRT Corp to sell its trains to the government, so that SMRT can focus entirely on meeting service standards without being saddled with heavy capital expenditures.

This is something Mr Klein would agree with. He is in favour of the government owning the physical asset, with a private firm operating the asset under contract to the government.

That way, the private company has the benefit of experience; the state can do its checks and balances; and the customer benefits with lower costs and better services.

“Public-private partnerships are about a relationship. And you figure out contractually how much risks you want to maintain on the public side, and how much risks you want to transfer to the private side,” he said.

This article was first published on April 18, 2016.
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With footage from in-car cameras being posted online to highlight or shame alleged traffic offenders, what are the video poster’s legal obligations and liabilities?

Cameras are everywhere and they are capturing more of people’s lives. These include personal cameras worn by police officers, closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) and dashboard cameras (dashcams) and they have been used for everything from deterring illegal loan sharks to exposing road terrors.

Of these cameras, the ones that seem to get much of the attention are the dashcams.

Some of the footage ends up on Stomp, Facebook pages like Beh Chia Lor – Singapore Road and YouTube channels like Singapore Reckless Drivers community (SRD Community), which has more than 10,000 subscribers.

These videos can bolster the case against the errant motorists.

Certainly, it appears that more people are reporting road terrors to the police.

There was more than a 30 per cent jump in such reports between 2014 and last year. (See report above.)

So it is timely to note some important points on the use of dashcam footage.

1. Posting footage online is not enough, the police say you are ‘strongly encouraged’ to make a police report

A police spokesman said: “For traffic violations posted on social media platforms, Traffic Police (TP) will look into the matter and take follow-up actions if the violations come to TP’s attention.

“Witnesses of such violations are strongly encouraged to come forward to lodge a police report, to assist the TP with investigations.”

2. You’d better not lie

Lawyer Louis Joseph said the witness has to be truthful.

“If any lies or half-truths are told, they risk being charged (with) giving false information to a public officer,” he said.

3. Dashcam footage and a police report may still not be enough

Said the police spokesman: “Additionally, the person reporting the violation has to undertake that he or she must be willing to appear in court as well.”

4. Back up the footage with other sources

The witness’ case can be bolstered by objective evidence like photos or videos with time and dates, and contact details of other witnesses, said lawyer Sunil Sudheesan.

“They will form part of the body of evidence against the accused,” he said.

REPORTING TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS

You can lodge a police report for traffic violations at the nearest Neighbourhood Police Centre or Post.

You can also report the traffic violations or provide images or videos related to traffic violations to the Police online via the “Feedback on road users” portal at www.police.gov.sg/epc/index.html

The Traffic Police will look into the matter after a report is lodged.

About 3,500 violation reports were submitted via the e-feedback platform in 2014, and about 4,700 last year.

This article was first published on April 18, 2016.
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