Most railway passengers prefer to stand or look for another seat rather than ask someone to move, research shows. It is time we overcame this most British of behaviours

For British people travelling by public transport, speaking to someone might seem like a fate worse than death – but is avoiding it really worth hours and hours of standing up on a train?

It seems so, according to research by train operator LNER (London North Eastern Railway). They found that just over half (56%) of us would actually prefer to stand, or make the effort to find an alternative seat, rather than simply ask a passenger who has sat down in our reserved seat to move.

In some ways it is understandable. We have all heard a story of how even the simplest of exchanges on a train, such as asking someone to move a bag from a seat, can get out of control and escalate into antisocial behaviour. LNER found that a quarter of the people it surveyed had moved carriages on at least one occasion after experiencing what they delicately describe as a “seat altercation”.

It is a phenomenon that doesn’t just affect trains – who hasn’t felt the extreme existential dread of having to ask someone “I think you might be sitting the wrong seat” at the theatre, in a cinema, at a gig or at football?

We have all been the person sitting uneasily in somebody else’s reserved seat on the train, knowing that every single person joining the carriage might be the one to ask us to move. Never ever, really feeling comfortable, even once the train has pulled out of the station.

So it is time for us collectively to pluck up the courage to ask people to move when they are sitting in our seats.

LNER’s new approach to this most British of problems is, of course, not to get us talking, but to create an app. It displays to passengers in real-time at each station which seats on the train are reserved for the journey. It should, in theory, allow you to find a seat without lifting your eyes from your phone screen and risking human contact. Or it will just as likely cause a massive bottleneck as the 17 people getting on at Grantham to head to Leeds all try to use the same door to fight it out over the one unreserved seat.