Safety operators steer Singapore's autonomous vehicle future without touching the wheel

Sherman Seng drives to work each morning the way his taxi-driver father did for fourteen years, but once he reaches the Punggol pickup point, his job becomes something altogether different. At twenty-four, Seng is a safety operator for Zig Driverless, a unit of ComfortDelGro, and when the autonomous shuttle begins its route at 9:30am, his hands stay off the wheel. His task is to watch—closely, constantly—for the vehicle's mistakes: abrupt braking, sharp turns, forgotten hazard lights, hesitation in traffic. He records each error and feeds it back to the engineering team so the system learns and improves. If something goes wrong, if the vehicle malfunctions or danger emerges, he is trained to take control instantly. But for now, in the ordinary moments, he sits alert and observes.

Seng joined the firm in March after completing his national service, holding a Higher Nitec certificate from the Institute of Technical Education. He is the youngest of thirteen safety operators on the ComfortDelGro team, and he completed three weeks of hands-on training in Guangzhou before operating shuttles in Singapore. His father, curious about his son's new path, took a ride on one of the autonomous vehicles Seng was operating. The elder Seng, who knew driving intimately, called it "better than his own driving." The younger Seng has already learned practical lessons from his father too—how to manage the physical strain of long shifts by stretching every two hours, and how to handle difficult passengers, like the family who insisted their child under 1.35 meters tall should board without a booster seat.

Seng is not alone in this transition. Sarah Ahmad, forty-five, was a part-time private-hire driver until November 2025, when she decided to become a safety operator for Grab, which has been running free autonomous shuttle rides in Punggol since April on three separate routes. Ahmad had been interested in technology since childhood and felt ready to focus more seriously on her career now that her four children, aged thirteen to sixteen, were old enough to be independent. Her month-long training covered the technical specifications of autonomous vehicles, how to ensure they remained in working condition, and how to manually take control when needed. One challenge was learning to drive from the left side of the vehicle, which required her to recalibrate her sense of space and traffic. Another was the hands-off discipline itself—operators are not supposed to touch the steering wheel or brakes. When her own father rode in a vehicle she was operating and saw her hands resting in her lap, he was, by her account, "frantic." He relaxed only after watching the shuttle operate smoothly for some time.

The work these operators do extends beyond passenger safety into the future development of autonomous systems. After each shift, which typically ends around 6:30pm, operators provide detailed feedback to engineering teams. They also test new system versions on dedicated testing vehicles before those versions are deployed to passenger-carrying shuttles, ensuring operational readiness. This feedback loop is essential: the safety operator's observations and inputs guide the engineers who refine the vehicles' decision-making and responsiveness. William Tan, a fleet manager at ComfortDelGro, now oversees five driverless vehicles and twelve safety operators from a control centre, managing live operations and responding to dynamic situations during service hours. Tan, who previously worked as an operations support assistant manager, describes his current role as "totally different" and says it has been challenging but rewarding to learn about autonomous vehicle technologies.

For workers in the taxi and private-hire sectors, the transition is becoming a formal pathway. The Skills and Workforce Development Agency now offers long-term career conversion programmes and short-course training schemes designed to help drivers move into safety operator roles. Ahmad has already taken the next step: she is now qualified to be a remote operator, managing multiple self-driving vehicles from an operations centre rather than sitting onboard. This development points toward Singapore's longer-term vision. While autonomous shuttles currently require a safety operator to be present in the vehicle, operators in Singapore hope eventually to run fully driverless shuttles without anyone onboard. The infrastructure for remote operation is already being built and tested, and workers like Ahmad are preparing for that future even as they perform their present role. For now, though, the safety operator remains essential—alert, hands-off, and ready to intervene the moment the machine falters.