Why are private toilet seats often a ring, but public or institutional toilet seats are often a horseshoe?

Dudes can stand up. drip drip drip

Open-front toilet seats are required for public toilets by the Uniform Plumbing Code, Section 409.2.2. There’s the dribble factor that @johnpowell so vividly evokes, but it also reduces the likelihood that your junk will be dragging over the same surface as some stranger’s junk. Don’t make me explain why that’s a good idea.

Because guys lift the seat to pee. Except in public areas, where no one likes touching the seat, so they’re most likely to just go, and therefore likely to piss on the seat, if it didn’t have the notch cut out.

You do raise an interesting question, though—if it’s such a good idea for public toilets, and there doesn’t appear to be a downside, then why not use open-front seats in homes? My guess is that because people have pretty universal feelings of disgust about public toilets, the look of those toilets has come to be associated with those negative feelings. I suspect that most people just wouldn’t want their home toilet to look like a public toilet because of those associations.

The u-shaped seats usually go on a long toilet bowl. Most toilet bowls at home are the rounder ones. Also, the u-shaped ones have less chance of getting pee on them, (from men and women), so easier to clean for cleaning staff.

My doctor has told me that he has never treated a person for an infected rearend, because of sitting on a toilet seat.

What does this have to do with the question???

Nothing.

Now where would you look on the internet for this kind of information? Is there a book on the history of toilets? Talk about subjects that are not generally considered suitable for dining table conversation. Thank goodness for Fluther for stretching the limits of my knowledge.