Did the police officer in this video act in an imprudent way?

At the point that the officer makes a traffic stop, he or she is not really able to just "write down their licence plate and go away."  First, the officer has the duty and obligation to know who the driver of the vehicle is.  This requires that the driver present identification to the officer and the driver has a legal duty and obligation to provide identification.  Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who loan out their vehicles to friends and friends-of-friends, and if the registered owner isn't the driver, there's very little chance of finding out who the driver is later -- I've heard, "I only know his street name..." too many times from the owner of a car involved in a crime. Second, the officer has a responsibility to make sure the person driving the vehicle isn't impaired or otherwise incapable of operating the vehicle safely.  This driver's speech seemed slurred and "thick-tongued," and he was obviously not cooperating with the officer.  These lead me to believe there is a good chance that the driver is impaired by alcohol or other drugs.  Simply letting the driver go could create a significant risk of a crash-related injury for both the driver of the vehicle and anyone else unlucky enough to be in his path. Finally, the officer did not escalate the situation.  The driver did, by fighting, and the passenger created the deadly-force situation by attacking the officer after he pulled the driver from the car.  If the second person didn't get involved, the officer may have been able to subdue the driver without significant injury.

As to your last question:  Timothy McVeigh was pulled over during a routine traffic stop (driving without plates) when the patrolman noticed a bulge in McVeigh's jacket; he admitted to having a gun, and was arrested on the two (relatively, as it were) minor charges. I'm not saying the two citizens in the video necessarily equate to the Oklahoma City bombers, but neither the officer in the video nor anyone on patrol knows who may be behind the wheel of a vehicle they've stopped.

He wasn't "unprudent" (sic) in any way. If he had not been a police officer he wouldn't have been pulling people over for speeding, so your first assumption is just weird. How you can watch that video and think it was the cop who escalated the situation is beyond me. Very clearly he was attacked for no reason, and defended himself.

You have an extremely odd concept of what a police officer's job is; they do not just "go away" if people engaged in illegal activity respond to them with hostility.  If that were the case, the crooks would rule. The men in the car were the ones who escalated the situation, not the LEO.  If they had cooperated, they'd be alive. Any chance that lesson is getting out there?

I watched. I saw a police officer doing his job and two or was it three drunk fools. If there was any unprudence (if you can make up words so can I) it was definately the act of jumping someone who has a gun and the right to use it. Think of some of the possible consequences of the officer just "going away". The drunk driver hits and kills someone else later. The officer is disciplined for allowing an obviously drunk driver to continue to drive. The clowns in the car are identified much later and are wanted for multiple offences. The officer is disiplined for allowing wanted fugitives to escape. The fools in the car boast all over town how they faced down a police officer. The officer is ridiculed out of his job by fellow officers. The most likely result is when the owner of the car is found later he denies being the driver at the time of the stop and nobody faces charges. As you said in your question, "don't mess with people that can kick your ass". The dudes in the car should have taken that advice.

Based on what the camera shows, my only (light) criticism of the officer is that he shot once with one hand, missed, hesitated whether to shoot again, and took his sights off the target. We were trained to use both hands and shoot three times when in close quarters, which that definitely was (or from the hip, in too-close quarters). Buddy in the white shirt should have had too many holes to charge a second time. I suspect this is a troll question.