More than one in six vehicles operated by Uber and Lyft drivers has unrepaired defects covered by outstanding safety recalls, according to a new study cited by NBC News. And that's not the only disturbing news about your shared ride — a separate study shows that the interior of the vehicle is likely 35,000 times dirtier than a toilet seat.
For the "Driving with Germs" study, insurance aggregator Netquote took swabs to the main touchpoints in ride-sharing vehicles, taxis and rental cars — door handles, seat belts and window buttons. The ride-sharing services had an average of 6 million "colony-forming units" of bacteria per square inch on those surfaces, compared to 2 million for rental cars, and just 27,593 for the cabs Netquote tested.
To put those figures into perspective, there are 2 million CFUs on the average toothbrush holder, 32,000 on a coffeemaker, and just 171 per square inch on a toilet seat.
