Health and Safety wise they are a poorer design than single sex cubicles with door gaps (the only design that HSE say can have gaps has to be in a single sex environment). This picture below shows the issue for anyone (not just children) having a medical emergency. Obviously with 11% of cardiac arrests happening in toilets, and millions of ambulant people in this country having invisible disabilities such as epilepsy, diabetes and other heart and neurological conditions, the risk assessment would be that these private designs aren’t at safe. Indeed, people are left for hours and sometimes days in public toilets in very busy places.
The other problem for women and children is assaults. These can also be in private designs of toilets in very public spaces. They get led in or pushed back in or the man lets himself in. My dataset shows this. Please note that because so many people are known to collapse in toilets, a safety feature for all public toilets is that the toilet should be able to be opened from the outside. You are basically in a private, soundproof space that someone can let themselves in to.
Theres also the fact that thousands of people ‘just’ get trapped in toilets. Universal designs are supposed to be private and sound resistant (unlike the ones in the story). This causes problems if you haven’t got a phone or a phone signal.
Then there’s the health bit. Unisex toilets have been medically and scientifically shown to have the largest pathogen count. As well as not being able to clean and drain the floor as easily, a fully enclosed toilet needs mechanical ventilation. Depending on which scientific study you look at, when you flush a toilet the plume travels around 1m to 1.5m so unless everyone before you has closed the lid, the sink and dryer within this range will have particles that have settled on it. Then there’s the fact that men don’t wash their hands as much as women. So the door handle won’t be as clean.
Whether they are better for queues depends on various factors. The occupant time within them increases and they maybe fewer toilets overall within a given space. Because of the privacy, sex and drug taking is a problem (which takes up time). As well as ventilation, cleaning, supervision for emergencies, the prevention of misuse is the reason door gaps are used. When much of the council public toilet provision in this country has disappeared because of misuse (such as vandalism, organised sex, drugs) it makes sense to not make provision mixed sex because the design then has to be private. ‘Sex and drugs and rockin the bowl’ has always been a problem. Ever wondered why cubicles were so small? One way of stopping it was to make cubicles so small you couldn’t fit 2 people in. Still doesn’t work with plane toilets.
Health and safety wise, unisex toilets are not great.
The demographic that unisex are of least detriment to are healthy men. Indeed they tend to like them for a long sit down. Which brings us back to the original story.