5.1 The Vocational Licence Points System: Structure and Thresholds

5.1 The Vocational Licence Points System: Structure and Thresholds

What the VLPS Is and Why It Exists

The Vocational Licence Points System (VLPS) is Singapore's disciplinary framework for holders of a Taxi Driver's Vocational Licence (TDVL) or a Private Hire Car Driver's Vocational Licence (PDVL). It is set out in the Road Traffic (Chauffeured Private Hire Car and Taxi Vocational Licence Demerit Points System) Rules 2017, which took effect on 1 July 2017 and apply to both taxi and chauffeured private-hire-car drivers. The VLPS exists because a vocational licence is a public-trust credential: passengers get into a stranger's vehicle assuming the driver has been vetted, trained and will behave professionally. The VLPS gives LTA a structured way to track conduct problems and remove or suspend drivers whose behaviour repeatedly or seriously breaches that trust, separate from, and in addition to, whatever criminal or civil penalty a specific incident might also carry.

Under the VLPS, a defined list of scheduled offences each carry a set number of demerit points. When a driver commits a scheduled offence, LTA records the points against the driver's vocational licence, and the offence is dealt with through a composition sum (an administrative fine offered in place of prosecution) or full court action. The demerit points are a separate consequence from the composition sum or court penalty — paying the fine or completing a court case does not erase the points; the points stay on the licence and accumulate.

Two Consequences From One Offence

It is easy for a candidate to assume that once a driver pays the fine, the matter is closed. It is not. Every scheduled offence produces two independent outcomes:

1. The individual penalty — a composition sum (a fixed administrative fine, such as the $500 figure attached to the most serious scheduled offences) or a court-imposed penalty for that specific incident.
2. The demerit points — added to a running total on the driver's vocational licence, which determines whether the licence itself is suspended or revoked.

This is the single most exam-relevant idea in this section: the licence-wide consequence is driven by the cumulative point total, not by any one offence in isolation (except where a single offence itself carries enough points to jump straight to the top threshold — covered in 5.4).

Suspension and Revocation Thresholds

LTA sets bands based on the total demerit points recorded on a driver's vocational licence:

Notice the pattern: every 5-point band beyond the first doubles the suspension length (2 weeks to 4 weeks to 8 weeks), and crossing 21 points stops being a suspension altogether and becomes a revocation — the licence is cancelled outright rather than paused for a fixed period.

Points Stack — They Don't Need to Come From One Big Offence

A driver does not need to commit one dramatic offence to reach a suspension band. Smaller offences committed over time simply add together. A driver who already has 5 points on record and then commits an offence worth 3 more points is now at 8 points — squarely inside the 6-10 band — even though neither individual offence looked serious on its own. Exam scenarios often test this by describing two or three separate, moderate incidents and asking the candidate to add the points and apply the threshold table, rather than describing one obviously severe offence.

Record Clearance: Earning a Clean Slate

The VLPS is not a permanent mark. A driver who maintains a clean record for 24 months from the date of their last offence has their past demerit points cleared. This is a rolling window measured from the most recent offence, not from the date of licensing or from a fixed calendar anniversary. If a driver goes 24 full months without committing a new scheduled offence, the points accumulated before that window clear from the record, effectively giving the driver a fresh start for future threshold calculations. If, however, a new offence occurs before the 24 months are up, the clearance window resets to begin counting from that newer offence date instead — so the older points remain live for longer than they otherwise would have (this mechanic is explored further in 5.4).

Why This Domain Carries the Heaviest Practice Weight

Driver Conduct and the VLPS carries the highest practice emphasis of any TDVL content area (20%), ahead of fares, safety and even the taxi/P2P regulations themselves. That weighting reflects reality: LTA's enforcement statements on overcharging explicitly cite the 6-point suspension trigger and the 21-point revocation trigger to warn drivers that conduct problems threaten their livelihood directly. Expect TDVL exam questions to give you a point total (or a set of point-earning events to add up) and ask what happens next, so the threshold table above is worth memorising cold before moving into which specific offences generate the points.