What do I say when the police pull me over?

Less than you want to, and in a fixed order that begins before you speak. The three pages here describe the United States only; the dome-light and four-sentences pages say so up front, and the restart page grounds its law in the US.

The thirty seconds before any words. Turn the dome light on was built from people on both sides of the window. Pull over, engine off, interior light on, window down, both hands on the wheel. Say what you are reaching for before you reach, and move slowly; one caution there says reaching into a pocket even to show it is empty has been read as a weapon. Stay in the car; a correction to a visitor’s account explains that getting out to greet the officer is normal in Europe and can get you shot in the US. If there is a firearm in the car, do not touch it, tell the officer where it is, and know your state’s rule on whether you must say so unprompted.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” The same page carries the argument about that question with both sides and no winner. Six separate conversations say answer no, or ask why, or stay quiet, because anything you volunteer becomes the reason on the citation; one account, a lawyer, says I didn’t know I was speeding admits inattention. Four accounts, three, and three more say a plain admission of a small thing, hands on the wheel, ended in a warning or a smaller fine. Two accounts add that I don’t know after an obvious red light reads as impaired or reckless and lengthens the stop. The decider the argument names is threefold: how serious the offence is, whether you intend to contest it, and where you are. One caution sits across both camps: three conversations say the friendly route’s warning is not evenly given, and a contraindication there says a driver who is not white should not count on it.

Four sentences for anything beyond a ticket. Let four sentences do all the talking is for the encounter that is more than a traffic offence: Am I free to go? I do not consent to any searches. I want a lawyer. I am invoking my right to remain silent. Each has a job. The first sorts the encounter and marks when custody began. The second protects the future, because consent makes any search legal forever while refusal is not probable cause. The third, said as a plain statement, requires questioning to stop. The fourth has to be said out loud, because wordless silence before custody can be described to a jury. Say them politely, comply physically with every instruction, and save every argument for a courtroom. That page says one truth as plainly as its accounts did: the risk of asserting these rights is not distributed evenly, and Black people in particular face escalation at a different rate; how much risk to carry is a judgment that belongs to the person standing in it, not to a page.

Your phone: a restart is the strongest lock. A restart is the strongest lock explains why fingerprint and face unlock are mostly convenience: your body can be used without your cooperation, and an officer can press your finger to the sensor. A reboot forces the passcode on nearly every modern phone. In the US the two locks live under different law; as of August 2026 whether compelled fingerprint unlocking is allowed is genuinely unsettled between federal appeals courts, and the safe assumption the accounts land on is that your biometrics can be taken and your passcode cannot. Say you do not consent to a search, and never offer a false code; refusal is your right, deception is a crime.

Who this is not for. Anyone outside the United States: in England and Wales staying silent can be held against you in court, and elsewhere the law imposes duties to identify yourself or answer, so the four-sentence script is not your script. Anyone who has been drinking, for whom the only line on the dome-light page is: do not drive. And one rule the pages put above every right: comply physically. Never resist an arrest, even a wrongful one; the legal argument happens later, with you alive and represented.