Ask many public transport users what gives and they’ll offer you a half-formed series of excuses, typically hinging on etiquette concerns such as, “But what if she’s not really pregnant?”, or, “I don’t want to upset someone by making them think I think they’re old!” Those are the nicer people; the rest sniff things such as, “Well, they didn’t LOOK disabled!”, or, “It’s her choice to have a baby!”, or, worse, “They didn’t ask!” (The rest just adopt the “ignore it and it will go away” method, glueing their eyes to Candy Crush until the pregnant woman or person with a cane just disappears.) This is not good enough. It’s placing a greater value on the feelings of the person already sitting than it is on the good courtesy of offering a seat, whether or not it’s needed. Such is the stalemate these apparently etiquette-crazed mass transit travellers find themselves at that, globally, travellers who might need a seat are being encouraged to wear badges or stickers that say things like “Invisible Disability: Please Offer Me A Seat”, or “Baby On Board”, because they’ve had so much trouble politely asking if they could sit down when someone capable of standing is in a seat.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on the city loop. Look, enough of this “I’m scared to upset someone” malarkey. It’s pretty easy to tell if someone wants to sit down: they’re looking at you, or at a combination of you and your seat, with the hungry-eyed stare of someone who has not sat down for a week straight. Or, they ask you if they can sit. More than once I’ve watched, gobsmacked, as an indolent teenager shunts their heaving backpack off a priority seat with a sigh and expression that says “I GUESS SO” after some dear old chap or exhausted expectant mother has asked, very politely, if they might possibly be able to sit there. I am not above hissing “Move” in these situations before the asking has even begun. These days I am fairly mercenary about public transport behaviour. If someone’s bag is taking up a vacant seat, I no longer ask, “Excuse me, could I please sit there? Sorry ...”, I just sit on the bag.

(While I’ve got you, to the people who sit on the aisle seat, giving your bag a comfortable window seat, while others are standing and desperate to sit down: you deserve to be dipped in honey and tied on top of an ant’s nest.) I’m the same about the priority seats: I just don’t sit in them. What about when the priority seats are full and there are more people on the tram/bus/train who might need a seat more than me? Put it the way Virginia K. Smith did for Lifehacker: just get up. “No need to make meaningful eye contact while doing that pointing gesture back and forth between the person and the seat. Just move. If they need the seat, they will swoop in and take it, and if not, you still attempted to do your good deed for the day, and is it really so bad to stand, anyway?” (I’d take it a step further: in my totalitarian free-public-transport science fiction futurescape, those seats are only for those who need them, and the rest of us stand up the back in a cage; anyone who disobeys is pushed into an airlock. There’s a reason I haven’t gone into politics, I guess.) These days, if I see someone I think might need or want to sit down, I just stand up and move. Most of the time, they take the seat; it’s pretty pain-free for all involved. If they follow me and protest, I just say something like, “I’m getting off soon."