[duchy]

Originally Posted by bighal

So how would you know if someone would have just put their hands all over your empty seat and table any way or sat in the seat and got off before you got on?

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I wouldn’t , like many of the other precautions you have to assume people generally behave sensibly or be incredibly paranoid. You don’t know the person who serves you in a shop has washed their hands either and could drive yourself mad assuming the worst.
In this case the kids were clambering everywhere so it was reasonable to assume they’d done the same before boarding the train so higher risk.