Road Traffic Act — Autonomous Vehicle Trials and Use

The Road Traffic Act 1961 was amended in 2017 (Road Traffic (Amendment) Act 2017) to insert Section 6C — "Trials and use of autonomous motor vehicles" — bringing AVs into hard law. Core provisions: the Land Transport Authority (LTA) is empowered to make subsidiary regulations, issue trial and operational permits for AVs, set insurance and safety requirements, and grant exemptions within designated areas. The accompanying Road Traffic (Autonomous Motor Vehicles) Rules 2017 cover trial applications and approvals, safety driver requirements, data logging and incident reporting (black-box), ongoing reporting obligations to LTA, and minimum insurance thresholds. In parallel, Singapore established CETRAN (Centre of Excellence for Testing and Research of Autonomous Vehicles) and the one-north AV trial zone, anchoring the legal authorisation in physical infrastructure. Together with the Health Products Act, this is one of the two core examples that the W&C tracker singles out for "regulating AI through existing sector statutes" — and the legal foundation for "intelligent transport and logistics," one of the five priority sectors of NAIS 1.0.