Carrying people in open-deck goods vehicles
Current rules for passengers carried on the floor or open deck of a goods vehicle, including seating, standing, height, space, and capacity markings.
Primary source: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/SL/S663-2010
The Road Traffic (Carriage of Persons in Goods Vehicles) Rules 2010 regulate when and how people may be carried in a goods vehicle. These rules apply to the vehicle driver and owner as well as to passengers (Singapore Statutes Online, Carriage of Persons in Goods Vehicles Rules 2010).
Open-deck vehicles
No person may be carried on the floor of an open-deck goods vehicle unless every passenger seat in the driver's cabin, an additional cabin, or an adjacent enclosed passenger or goods space is filled (Singapore Statutes Online, rule 3). A person must not be carried within a cage on the floor under the amendment that is scheduled to commence on 1 January 2027; this article does not treat that uncommenced provision as current law (Singapore Statutes Online, 2026 amendment).
While a person is being carried, no part of the person's body may project beyond the vehicle's side. A person must not stand in a moving goods vehicle unless they are a permitted attendant, and a load must not be positioned so that it is likely to fall onto a passenger (Singapore Statutes Online, rule 4).
For an open-deck goods vehicle, a seated passenger's height must not exceed 1.1 metres measured from the deck (Singapore Statutes Online, rule 5). The clear floor space available for each passenger must be at least 0.372 square metres (Singapore Statutes Online, rule 8).
The vehicle must display a marking or label showing its maximum floor passenger capacity at the right side of the rear tailboard or another conspicuous place determined by the Registrar. Altering or defacing that marking so that it no longer conforms to the prescribed specifications is an offence (Singapore Statutes Online, rule 9).
The Rules do not authorise carrying a person for hire or reward on a goods vehicle. A trailer may carry only bona fide attendants for attending to the trailer, within the statutory limit (Singapore Statutes Online, rules 2 and 6).
Coverage debt
- The handbook's broader description of light goods vehicles and any vehicle-class licensing question are not reproduced here unless stated in the current governing text.
- The cage prohibition is an official amendment scheduled for 1 January 2027, not a current provision as at this article's verification date.