This is no Sparta and he’s not quite Leonidas from 300, but this cabbie sure got nationalistic when it came to pointing out the blame for a traffic accident.
The above video has gone viral over the past weekend in Indonesia and shows an irate Blue Bird taxi driver screaming at a foreigner on the road after an apparent motor accident between their vehicles.
With imperfect English, he shouts at the foreigner, “This one Indonesia! No England! No USA! You know?… You musti ganti (you must pay for the damages)!”, hinting that he thought the foreigner was going to commit a hit-and-run prior to the events in the video.
(Also, apparently people in the England and the USA don’t pay for damages when they’re at fault for a traffic accident. At least in this cabbie’s world.)
The whole time, the unidentified foreigner keeps calm despite the torrent of verbal abuse from the taxi driver and focuses on making a phone call, presumably to sort out the situation. Several motorcycle taxi drivers couldn’t help but film the exchange (there are several versions of the video online) while laughing at the cabbie.
It’s not yet known what exactly happened before the video, though the cabbie did show bystanders the chipped paint on the right side of his taxi’s front bumper. It also appears that the incident took place on Jalan Pintu Gelora 1 (between fX Sudirman mall and Gelora Bung Karno Stadium) in Senayan.
As for the foreigner, his car sported a CD 18 license plate, which indicates that it is an official diplomatic car belonging to the Australian Embassy.
Blue Bird confirmed that the incident took place in Senayan, and said that they have sanctioned the driver in the video.
“Frankly we regret the behavior of the driver whose actions were not in line with Blue Bird’s service standards,” said Blue Bird public relations head Teguh Wijayanto, as quoted by Kompas today.
“I can’t disclose the details of the incident to prevent people from coming to their own conclusions as to who was at fault. The police are more entitled to explain this.”
