Commuter Fight Club

I've noticed over the last few months of commuting several incidents which almost became violent and one which actually did when a late middle aged gentleman, well, man had a fight with a young lady.

Now, it was a slightly unusual situation, we were on a small train that was totally packed, to the point that people were standing in the aisle between the rows of seats and the more open section by the doors was also full of people standing. The man in question was leading a procession of people who had obviously boarded the first carriage just as the train was leaving and who were in the process of walking through the train looking (fruitlessly no doubt) for a seat. The procession was halted when they came upon all the people already standing in the aisle. The man stood there for a bit, realised his quest was doomed and settled himself in the corridor. This wasn't good enough for the lady though and after a bit of huffing and sighing designed to indicate no doubt that she wanted to keep walking, eventually tapped the man on the shoulder and asked him to move. He, not unreasonably, pointed out that given the aisle was full of people and that there wasn't really anywhere for her to go (besides which given that it's only slightly more than one person wide, unless he sat on someones lap there wasn't much chance of her squeezing past even if there was somewhere for her to go.)

This wasn't good enough for the lady however, and she announced, rather aggressively I must say, that if he didn't move she would move him. So at this point of course it became a lot more interesting (and I wished I'd been videoing it!) He made some comment to the effect that he'd like to see her try, so she did! She launched a massive shove into his back, but he'd cunningly braced himself on the seats so nothing much happened. This just made the lady even more mad. There was a bit more shoving while the man tried to do his best impression of a traffic bollard. Unfortunately, seeing the kerfuffle, the people ahead in the doorway squeezed together a bit more, giving the people in the aisle room to shuffle forward so the procession started moving again. But just after they got going the man unexpectedly (and rather mean spiritedly) whipped round and shoved the lady hard, knocking her right off her feet and back into the person behind before turning and marching triumphantly on. Sadly, I never got to see what (if anything) happened after that.

Now generally I'd say the man didn't do anything wrong right up unto the point he needlessly pushed the lady back. He was right, there wasn't really anywhere to go and it wasn't his fault, the lady should really have just accepted it and been content to stay where she was but there was no need for him to push her over either.

So, what's the point of this? Well, I was wondering if the trains are designed in such a way that they somehow cause these kind of problems. I've seen another near fight between two guys sitting on a three seat bench over shoulder room. Again, it wasn't anyone's fault per se, it's just that the bench seats really aren't wide enough for three normal sized people to sit next to each other, although there was no need for the men to get quite so aggressive about it.

If you combine narrow aisles with narrow seats and too many people crammed too close together, are fights inevitable? If I've seen four incidents in four months, how many others are happening every day? Could it have been intentional? Perhaps there's a secret government plan to toughen up sedentary commuters by getting them to fight each other.

More importantly, has anyone thought of recording them?