YouTube Fight Vid Sparks New Safety Fears

A disturbing racial confrontation on an Oakland bus is raising renewed fears about the safety of public transportation. Like a scene straight from the racial conflict movie Crash, a heated exchange between a young black man and 67-year-old white passenger quickly devolves into blows as passengers scream. "He hit me first," the white passenger crows after pummeling the other man to the floor. The battle began when the white passenger asked the other: "How much you charge me for a spit shine?"

The video, posted by a passenger on YouTube, is just the latest showing violent confrontations on public transportation from San Francisco to New York, notes the Christian Science Monitor. “We hate for this sort of thing to happen,” said a spokesman for the Oakland bus service. "These types of things are not commonplace." Still, another transit official conceded that it's not how safe passengers really are, "it's how they feel."
(More race stories.)