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Speaker 1: Why would you want to be a bus driver. Yesterday

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Speaker 1: a driver, fellow passengers all witnessed a stabbing take place

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Speaker 1: and the person died. This is two thirty in the

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Speaker 1: afternoon on a bus in suburban Auckland and someone is

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Speaker 1: stabbed to death. There's been beatings of passengers and drivers.

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Speaker 1: I don't have to explain this. You've seen the headlines.

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Speaker 1: The problem of drivers safety seems to only be getting worse.

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Speaker 1: I was walking past a bus just a few weeks back.

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Speaker 1: There was a guy. He looked wild in the eyes.

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Speaker 1: You know the ones that just look crazy, You know

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Speaker 1: the ones that I'm talking about, swearing and yelling and

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Speaker 1: walking up to buses and kicking their doors. So every

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Speaker 1: time a bus would come along, the guy would just

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Speaker 1: kick their door, and he did it to several of them.

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Speaker 1: I didn't say anything. I was with other people. They

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Speaker 1: didn't say anything because you're just worried he's going to

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Speaker 1: go nuts at you. But we could carry on walking

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Speaker 1: down the road. When you work on public transport, you

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Speaker 1: cannot escape the public. And when the public is increasingly hostile,

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Speaker 1: there are more and more bad eggs on the bus.

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Speaker 1: Where do you go to? Nowhere? You can't go anywhere,

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Speaker 1: and the long promised safety screens are finally being installed,

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Speaker 1: but as we heard on the show a couple of

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Speaker 1: months back, it'll take another two years to even get

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Speaker 1: to eighty percent coverage. There are plenty of safe bus

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Speaker 1: journeys out there, plenty of drivers who love what they do,

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Speaker 1: no doubt about that. But the more you hear about

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Speaker 1: these awful acts of violence on or around our drivers,

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Speaker 1: you've got to ask yourself, is it worth the risk?

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Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live

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Speaker 1: to news Talks it'd be from five am weekdays, or

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