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But in the last year, he has found himself stuck behind the wheel with increasing regularity. If there is an accident on the Central Expressway (CTE) or Pan-Island Expressway (PIE), he can easily expect to wait for at least half an hour.
'I see at least three accidents on the expressways per week these days, sometimes even two a day,' said Mr Lim, a taxi driver of eight years. 'In the past, it didn't used to be so bad.'
The statistics seem to bear him out.
Last year, there were 498 accidents - 14 resulted in deaths and the other 484 in injuries to motorists - on the 42km-long PIE alone.
The 13km-long Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE) comes in second with 217 accidents, six of them fatal. The 16km-long CTE had 201 accidents.
Tow truck services The Sunday Times spoke to said accidents happen mainly on the CTE and PIE because traffic volumes on these two are the highest among the nine expressways in Singapore.
And they've seen their business grow.
Mr Jimmy Ong, 44, owner of Joo Keong towing service said he has seen an increase in the number of pile-up accidents.
'I can get up to three calls a day for these pile-ups while previously, there was only about one case a day,' he said.
Last year, the number of cars in Singapore grew by 9 per cent, the biggest jump in three years. Compared to 10 years ago, the number of cars has jumped by nearly 40 per cent, from 370,000 in 1997 to 515,000 today.
Adding to the congestion problem: drivers use their cars here more than in many other big cities, averaging 21,000km a year, compared to 9,100km in London, 13,900km in Melbourne and 19,800km in Chicago.
That might explain the rise in the number of accidents resulting in death or injury on Singapore roads: 6,705 in 2005 to 8,323 last year.
'There have been too many cars on the roads in these two years. The new drivers are the ones behind the accidents,' said cabby Mr Lim.
Mr Ong says the calls for his tow service usually come on rainy days, during morning and evening peak hour traffic or where there are road works.
Motorists are getting frustrated with having to be stuck behind the wheel more often.
Marketing and sales manager Johnny Xie, 55, has been caught in a jam at least once a week in the past year. He is constantly on the roads because of his job.
His beef: People involved in minor scrapes holding up traffic by thrashing things out in the middle of an expressway.
'It's usually just a small bump but they could cause a major jam for at least an hour,' said the annoyed driver who once spent three hours on the PIE because of a motorbike accident.
Jams get especially bad when there are injuries or casualties involved as cars have to stay put in their lanes until the police and the ambulance arrive.
Tow truck drivers, too, cannot escape the jams as they are not allowed to travel on the road shoulder.
Mr Joe Tamilselvam, 39, owner of Kings Towing Service said: 'From the time I get a call from my customer till the time I get to the accident scene, it normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour.'
He was fined $180 once and got four demerit points for speeding as he was rushing to an accident scene.
Because expressways come in such long stretches with only periodic exit points, all it takes is a little incident to clog up the entire stretch.
The new Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE), for instance, could see its 6,000 vehicle-an-hour capacity halved if an incident occurs on just one lane.
'A half-hour incident can create a queue 11/2 hours long...with a tail-back of 3 to 5km,' said the Land Transport Authority's (LTA) chief transportation engineer, Dr Chin Kian Keong, in an earlier report.
LTA monitors traffic flow through numerous cameras mounted along the expressways from its Intelligent Transport Systems Centre in River Valley Road.
When it spots a vehicle breakdown or an accident holding up traffic, it despatches a tow truck to the site.
These yellow trucks bearing the Expressway Monitoring Advisory System (Emas) sign will tow the affected vehicles to the nearest carpark for free.
Since January 2006, it is an offence if a driver refuses to let his car be towed away by the recovery crew, even if he might be waiting for his own tow truck service.
LTA says nearly 60 per cent of all traffic incidents are cleared within 12 minutes of its recovery crew's arrival. With the introduction of the LTA traffic marshals last October, it aims to clear 75 per cent of incidents within 12 minutes.
These marshals are auxiliary police officers whose job is to respond to incidents that hold up traffic on expressways. They are empowered to perform traffic control duties and preserve evidence at accident sites.
But if a particularly serious accident happens, clearing the site could take up to two hours, said LTA.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force says its average response time is 11 minutes for all calls.
Last year, it despatched 1,530 ambulances onto expressways and generally had no difficulty getting motorists to give way.
But student Joanna Phua, 24, thinks regular motorists are as much to blame for congestion as accident victims like herself.
She was involved in a pile-up with six other cars on the PIE recently, and the lot had moved their cars to the road shoulder. But that didn't ease the jam.
'The cars still drove by slowly. Everyone just wanted to gawk,' she said.
