How to get diskaun for traffic summons? We kena saman to find out

Given that most of us probably won’t commit any crime (touch wood) or sue anyone in our lifetimes, we won’t really have a reason to go to court. So, the only exposure to courtrooms we usually get is from fiction, and if TV3 dramas and Law & order are anything to go by, courtrooms are somber places where criminals get death stares from the judge while lawyers intermittently shout “OBJECTION!”.

Very drama lah, but that might’ve made many of us Malaysians think that anytime we have to pergi mahkamah is a death sentence. But what’s it actually like to go to court? Lucky for you, I’m in the perfect position to cerita, cuz…

I had to go to court for using my phone while driving

Yeah, that’s a thing now. Well, it’s been a thing since 2020, but I had zero idea. When I got stopped at a roadblock in October for texting while driving, I was expecting to get the usual PDRM saman. I was ordered to go to court instead, and the saman more or less looks like this:

No, you can’t go to a police station in advance to settle the saman somehow. If you feel like malas pergi mahkamah, an arrest warrant will be issued against you. According to the summons I got, I was supposed to appear at the PJ Courthouse at 8.30am on 19 December.

It’s a good thing I went early (around 8.10am) on the day itself, since there’s limited parking spots available, and I had to line up alongside dozens of people just to enter the courthouse when it opens at 9am. From that point on, I learnt that…

The hardest part about going to court is the waiting

Once you enter the courthouse proper, you don’t get to see the magistrate yet. Here’s how it goes:

• You gotta register first. They’ll keep your MyKad and let you know which courtroom to go to
• Then you have to wait for a police officer to call your name outside the courtroom
• THEN you have to wait inside the courtroom until you’re called to face the magistrate

The registration’s not so bad – it only took me about 15 minutes to get that part done, but boy, the waiting outside the courtroom can be painful. Turns out, there’s only one courtroom for traffic offences, and remember the dozens of people waiting to enter the courthouse earlier? Yep. Most of them were there cuz they kena saman by traffic police.

Only about 10 people are called into the courtroom at a time, and the order is completely at random. Just because you registered first doesn’t mean you get called first. If you’re lucky, you’ll be in one of the first few batches of people summoned in to see the magistrate, and you’ll be done with everything after 30 minutes, tops. If you’re like me, you’ll have to wait about 3 hours to even get a sniff of the courtroom.

Anywho, when you get to masuk the courtroom, you’ll still have to wait for the jurubahasa to call you to the stand, but once that happens…

You can actually ask the magistrate (politely) to lower your fine

As you face the magistrate, the jurubahasa will read out the details of your wrongdoing and ask you whether you admit to it or not. You can either:

• Admit to it and appeal for a lower fine
• Plead not guilty and fight the case, with or without a lawyer

Appealing for a lower fine isn’t as hard as it sounds. All you have to do is tell the magistrate why you shouldn’t be fined the maximum amount (which depends on your offence). It could be that you’ve lost your job recently, you have aging parents or children to take care of, you’re retired with no income or whatever else you think might get the magistrate to kesian you.

Chances are, if you have a legit reason and it’s your first offence, you’ll only be fined a fraction of the maximum amount. In my case, I could’ve been fined a maximum of RM1,000 for using my phone while driving, but since it’s my first time getting saman-ed ever and I buat muka kesian, the magistrate told me my fine was to be RM250.

With that done, all that’s left is to pay the fine. This step sounds like it should be the easiest one, but it’s a hassle. There’s no number ticketing system like when you renew your license at the JPJ, so you have to wait near the registration counter and listen for your name to be called out to get your payment bill.

Once you have the bill, you have to pay at another counter if you’re using debit/credit card or at the ATM machine beside the entrance of the courthouse if you’re paying by cash and use the receipt to get your MyKad back from the registration counter. The entire payment process took me about an hour.

And that concludes my adventures at the PJ Courthouse. The entire experience was more tedious than it was scary, and here are my tips if y’all ever have to go to court for a traffic offence:

• Take a day off work if you have to – you don’t know how long you’ll be waiting for
• Dress appropriately. Don’t be silly and wear a singlet or sandals
• Bring and wear a face mask (I forgot mine and had to buy one at the cafeteria)
• Bring a power bank for your phone
• Be polite to the staff and magistrate at the courthouse
• If you like convenience, pay your fine with a debit or credit card

The best tip of all? Don’t commit an offence in the first place so you don’t have to go through all of this. Adios, amigos.