(WAND) – A study says ride-sharing vehicles from companies such as Uber and Lyft tend to be thousands of times dirtier than a toilet seat.
Insurance aggregator Netquote put together the “Driving with Germs” study, which saw swabs taken to the parts of these cars that people most often touch, including window buttons, seat belts and door handles. Those surfaces had an average of 6 million “colony-forming units” of bacteria on them per square inch. Rental cars have a 2 million average, while the cabs Netquote looked at had only 27,593.
NBC News added more stats for perspective. The average toothbrush holder has over 2 million CFUs, while coffeemakers have about 32,000 and a toilet seat has only 171 per square inch.
The dirtiest part of the ride-sharing cars was window switches, with 5 million CFUs on them. Seat belts were far lower at 1,810 and - in a stat that might surprise readers - door handles were no dirtier than toilet seats.
Lyft issued a statement responding to the study. It pointed out that drivers tend to use their own cars as part of their service. Such a vehicle is “the same car they use in their daily lives, driving their kids to school or friends around town”, per the company.
