The Maserati driver who earned widespread flak online this past week for his road rage appears to be a National University of Singapore (NUS) professor who was born in Guangzhou, China.
This past week, a video capturing the driver’s reckless speeding and road rage went viral. The incident occurred last Friday, 7 Sept in Lorong Chuan.
In the video, the driver of the black vehicle with the license plate number SKK9192G attempted to overtake a lorry on a narrow lane and failed, mounting a kerb instead. Despite this, the driver continued speeding against oncoming and tried to corner the lorry.
The driver was slammed for being a road bully after a 26-second long clip capturing the incident went viral on social media, with about 360,000 views:
Netizens also discovered that this is not the first time the driver has driven recklessly on Singapore roads, after some social media users with a keen eye recognised the same driver from a similar incident in 2013.
In the 2013 incident, the same driver aggressively tailgated a motorcyclist in a 50km/h. After overtaking the motorcyclist, the Maserati suddenly swerved right, in what appears to be an attempt to intimidate the motorcyclist:
Yesterday, the police arrested the driver after the latest video capturing his dangerous driving caused an uproar online.
Today, the Chinese daily reported that the Maserati driver is a Distinguished Professor at NUS and that after the incident, the professor blamed the lorry driver for not giving way to him and cutting into his own lane.
The daily reported that the NUS professor is a faculty member in the Geography Department of the school of Arts and Social Science. The publication further revealed that the professor graduated from NUS himself in 1992 and came back to teach in NUS after obtaining a PhD in the UK in 1995.
Ten years later, in 1995, the educator was promoted to become a full professor and in February this year, the professor was reportedly given the recognition of being a “Distinguished Professor”.
While the Chinese daily declined to reveal the name of the professor, online sleuths discovered that the professor is Dr Henry Wai-chung YEUNG, who teaches at NUS’ Department of Geography:
According to NUS’ website, Prof Yeung was born in Guangzhou and moved to Hong Kong with his family in 1979, when he was 11-year-old. Prof Yeung moved to Singapore in 1988 after completing his A-levels in Hong Kong. The professor himself shared on NUS webpage:
“I then obtained my Ph.D, under the supervision of Professor Peter Dicken, from the School of Geography, University of Manchester in England in 1995 and returned to start my career at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore,” he wrote.
“Since July 2005, I have been Professor of Economic Geography. Since February 2018, I have been appointed Distinguished Professor of the National University of Singapore in recognition of my ‘outstanding academic excellence as well as academic and intellectual leadership’.”