Ex-actor Edmund Chen, 64, gets jail term for accident cut from 5 days to 1 after appeal

Former actor Edmund Chen, who was previously sentenced to five days' jail for careless driving, had his jail term reduced to one day on Jul. 20, 2026, after a partially successful appeal.

CNA reported that Chen began his jail term immediately, and told the media that he had asked his family not to attend the hearing.

Chen, who is named in court documents as Tan Kai Yuan, had previously injured a motorcyclist in March 2025 after colliding with a motorcycle that was overtaking his car.

He was also disqualified from driving for five years.

Jail term reduced

Noting that the driving ban still stands, CNA reported that Justice Hri Kumar Nair found the sentence handed down by a lower court to be manifestly excessive.

The district judge may have overstated the number of relevant harm and culpability factors, and did not appear to have given enough weight to mitigating factors, he said.

He added that Chen did all he could reasonably do after the collision.

This included stopping his car promptly, rendering assistance to the victim as well as cooperating with authorities.

Chen had previously pleaded guilty in court on Jan. 29, 2026, to one count of driving without reasonable consideration for other road users, resulting in an accident.

At the time, the prosecution had asked for a fine of between S$3,000 and S$5,000.

'High degree of carelessness': Lower court judge

Court documents seen by Mothership stated that the district judge found that not only was there a "high degree of carelessness" and a sustained period of inattention in Chen's actions, he was also "deliberately cavalier about certain mitigable risks".

After receiving his jail sentence, Chen, who did not agree with a fine as sought by both the prosecution and defence, changed lawyers and appealed, CNA reported.

According to CNA, Senior Counsel Abraham Vergis was the third lawyer acting for the case and sought the maximum fine for Chen on Jul. 20.

Arguments for appeal

Calling for the maximum fine of S$5,000 to replace the five-day jail term, Vergis took the court through dashcam footage of the incident and refuted observations made by District Judge Shawn Ho.

The district judge said there was a "sustained period of inattention" shown when Chen filtered and allowed a car to pass him before filtering sharply, CNA reported.

To that, Vergis argued that it was not clear to him how this amounted to a sustained period of inattention.

Since Chen slowed down and engaged his right indicator, it showed that he was paying close attention to the movement of traffic, he added.

CNA reported Justice Hri Kumar as agreeing with Vergis, adding that the description "sustained period of inattention" did not quite describe what had taken place in the video.

According to Vergis, "we shouldn't be slicing and dicing" Chen's actions to say that crossing over is one infraction and going over the chevron marking is a second one, given that they are "one and the same".

Noting that he had difficulty with how the statement of facts did not make certain things clear that were clear in the dashcam footage, Justice Hri Kumar said the statement of facts instead gives a different impression of what happened from the dashcam footage.

The lower court judge had also appeared to convey the same impression, CNA reported.

'Borderline case': DPP

In maintaining the prosecution's position of seeking a high fine, up to the maximum, the deputy public prosecutor argued that the jail term imposed was not manifestly excessive since the case fell within a band allowing the five-day jail term.

The five-day jail term is not "so far apart" from the high fine sought by the prosecution as to be an error, he said.

Calling this a "borderline case", he said a person applying the appropriate framework would get a result in the range of a high fine or a jail term.

"While the judge landed on a slightly higher side of that spectrum, we're saying he didn't commit an error, because he applied the framework properly," CNA reported him as saying.

He added that Chen's list of past traffic violations included speeding, failing to conform to a red-light signal, parking offences, as well as using his phone while driving.

"We can't say that aside from this incident and the latest incident in October 2013, there's a long and unblemished record," he said.

CNA reported that Justice Hri Kumar said he was unable to conclude the district judge to be clearly wrong in assessing that the threshold to warrant jail time had been crossed.

He cut the jail term to just one day as he found five days to be excessive.

The accident

On the afternoon of Mar. 4, 2025, Chen had been driving on the leftmost lane of the four-lane Ayer Rajah Expressway towards Central Expressway (CTE).

The third and fourth lanes led to Keppel Road, while the first and second lanes led to the CTE.

He intended to go to CTE but did not form up in time and tried to go to the second lane by braking abruptly and attempting to cross the chevron markings in between.

Among other things, he allowed a car to pass him in the third lane before filtering sharply across the third lane.

This caused him to collide with a motorcycle that was overtaking his car, causing grievous hurt to the rider.

Chen stopped and immediately rendered assistance to the victim.

The victim was sent to the hospital, where he underwent surgery and was found to have sustained multiple right-hand wrist fractures.

He was given 99 days of hospitalisation leave but did not suffer any permanent disability.

CNA reported that for driving without due consideration for other road users, resulting in grievous hurt, Chen could have been jailed for up to two years, fined up to S$5,000, or both.