A driver claims he was pulled over after he was involved in a road rage incident in Bangkok.
Key points:The driver says the police told him to stop speeding or be charged with obstructionThe driver, whose name is not being used for legal reasons, said the police pulled him over after they realised he was speedingThe driver was arrested on Thursday, but is appealing against the decisionPolice are appealing against his arrest, saying he was acting recklesslyThe driver said he was driving on the Pattaya Highway when he was approached by Royal Transport Services officers in Pattaya.
He said they told him he had to stop moving, as they had a traffic offence against him.
He told the ABC he told the officers to stop following him and to put their hands behind their backs.
“I just got on the shoulder and they just said ‘go away’ and I said ‘no, you can’t’,” he said.
“They were trying to get me to stop, and they said ‘why are you following me?'”
The driver asked why the police wanted to arrest him.
“The police were telling me to go away and that’s why I was pulled out of the car,” he said, explaining he was not resisting arrest.
“When I was arrested, I was just trying to do my job and I just asked why.”
But they told me I couldn’t even move my legs because of the traffic offence.
“There was nothing that was said or anything that I could do.”
Police say they were called to the scene of a road-rage incident on March 1.
“We were approached by a driver and he told us that he had pulled over in a very serious way and the police said that if he was to continue to drive at that speed, they would take him to the police station and they would charge him with obstruction,” a police spokesman said.
A statement issued by the department said the driver had been stopped in Pattay district, on the east side of the Pattay Highway, after the driver was pulled from his car.
“After making enquiries, we found that the driver’s car was speeding and that he was blocking traffic,” the statement read.
“During this period of time, the driver also caused traffic congestion by causing traffic congestion on the road.”
The statement added: “We then decided that we should take the driver to the Pattayan Police Station, where we could conduct a breath test to check his blood alcohol content.”
The driver claimed he was also charged with speeding, obstruction, failure to stop and failure to wear a seatbelt.
He also alleged that the officers asked him to remove his seatbelt and to get out of his car so that he could take a breath sample.
“At that point, I asked the police to stop their conduct and I told them that they were acting reckably,” he told ABC Radio’s AM program.
“This was not a criminal act.
This was a traffic stop.”
The incident comes amid an intensifying crackdown on illegal driving, with Thailand reporting more than 1,000 deaths this year and more than 100,000 road accidents.
The Pattaya Traffic Court is responsible for enforcing traffic laws in the country.
In the wake of a spate of fatal road-rattling incidents in the past month, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha last month ordered police to speed up the speed limits on the country’s main thoroughfares.
A police spokeswoman told ABC News: “The road police will now continue to act in accordance with the new speed limits.”
