SINGAPORE - In a bid to boost road safety, taxi drivers will be given alerts through their in-car mobile display terminals (MDT) whenever they approach red-light and speed cameras.

The terminals in more than 20,500 taxis, from the ComfortDelGro and SMRT fleets, will be progressively upgraded with new software and data for this.

MDTs are already installed in most taxis in Singapore, and cabbies use them to take bookings and receive information from their companies.

The initiative was jointly announced on Tuesday (Sept 20) by the Traffic Police and the National Taxi Association, which will partner the two cab operators to roll this out.

This follows a six-month pilot from October 2015 to March involving over 3,800 taxis from ComfortDelGro.

It was found that speeding violations decreased by 40 per cent during the pilot, compared with the pre-trial period from April to September 2015.

The number of violations for running red-lights also dipped by 34 per cent in the same period.

Traffic Police Commander Sam Tee said the new MDT feature will allow the taxi drivers "to be alerted and also to drive safe, and not to get into traffic summons situations".

Cabbies will be automatically notified by the MDT when they are about 500m away from a red-light or speed camera.

Mr Tee added that through the data provided by the Traffic Police, cabbies will also get real-time updates of nearby traffic accidents.

He urged other taxi operators to also come onboard. Besides ComfortDelGro and SMRT, there are three other operators - Trans-Cab, Premier and Prime - which run a total of 7,300 taxis.

ComfortDelGro will progressively update the MDTs in its entire fleet from October, while SMRT will roll it out from next year.