VIDEO: Dealing With The Cops Can Be Tricky, Here’s What You Shouldn’t Do

There’s been another trending video making its rounds on social media involving an errant driver dealing with Malaysian traffic policemen that makes us wonder if this chap has read our guide on ‘What to do when the police stops you.’

 (Click to play video)

It’s apparent that the man behind the wheel has been accused of “jumping a red light,” a point which the disgruntled driver doesn’t seem to latch on to nor accept.

Now, it’s easy to jump to conclusions pointing out that the driver is clearly in the wrong, and it’s certainly the way it seems in this video. But if a commenter on the original video post who claims to be the Singaporean man’s daughter (Ivy Lee) can be believed, it’s a fair point to say that his poor command of the English or Bahasa Malaysia language, paired with a bit of a temper, got him in more trouble than there should have been at all.

But language barriers or not, he made two very obvious mistakes in our humble opinion. One, he lost his temper – raising your voice like that is never going to solve anything. Two, he shouldn’t have uttered the words “I give you money” or “Come la, I give you anything” just like that, in any circumstance – that’s just going to draw a heap of negative attention, especially where a video camera is involved, and regardless of what intentions you had behind the choice of words.

Equally, the traffic officer wasn’t on his best form either from what we can tell: constantly repeating “show me your license!” and then saying in a threatening way “I give you saman ah.” He also calls for the support of another officer to “tangkap, tangkap, tangkap dia” which loosely translates to a call to arrest the man.

The second traffic officer comes around, and plainly doesn’t want to be on camera – again failing to reiterate the driver’s errors in a clear fashion – then disappears.

The way we see it, both parties had a little bit of the blame to shoulder, paired with poor communication between them. The driver seems to confuse wanting to discuss what his mistake was with the officer, saying instead “what you want” again and again. That likely sparked the officer’s frustrations.

It’s hard to conclude that point without knowing what happened before the camera started rolling, and after it stopped. From what we can tell, it looks like the driver just wasn’t cool enough to handle the situation, nor was he equipped with the right knowledge required at the time.

Either way, there’s a way for you to avoid such difficult situations entirely. With cops cracking down on errant drivers as hard as they are these days, be sure to know yours rights, and know what to do when the police stops you.

And come on, guys and girls. Let’s ease off the racial slurs, yes?