I see you!

You know outside of the US most countries bathrooms stalls actually work / fit / don't have peekaboo gaps?
- Yes, and we're incredibly envious of it every time it comes up :(
  
  Al I thought this was a reference to the Greenland MP (I think?) I heard on NPR this morning. He was asked if he thinks the US Government is fascist and he said "if you see a piece of wood with hinges on it, you start to ask if its a door" or something like that
  
  Every time what comes up? Your peekaboo?
- In a lot of public stalls in Japan, the outer end of the door is rounded. And the wall it connects to when closed is concaved. So even though there’s a gap to allow the door to open and close freely, there no direct line of sight.
  
  That sounds like it would cost 5¢ more to manufacture and install. Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
  
  That sounds awesome. Love cool designs like that.
  
  I don't know about 'a lot' but these are definitely in recently-renovated stations and buildings, at least in areas with high traffic. I definitely still see many that are only vaguely better than the US outside of Tokyo and the other big cities.
- Peekaboo gaps exist outside the states don't gaslight our readers. Urinals in Heathrow are just a fucking trough you're supposed to piss in like you're at a Red Sox game.
  Public restrooms in Britain at least aren't any more enlightened than those in the States
  
  Apologies if you feel I was gaslighting.
  I've never experienced Heathrow so can't comment.
  I would argue from 'my' experience UK bathroom's seem more enlightened but your own experience may vary.
  
  At least the door overlaps the gap.
  What’s up with a trough?
  
  Please tell me they dump huge buckets of ice into the troughs at Heathrow.

America? America.
The rest of the world somehow manages to make doors the size of the frame that go pretty much to the floor.
- Just the USA, not all of America
- I think it's meant to stop people from shooting up and/or fucking and/or falling asleep and/or dying in stalls.
  It is fucking annoying though.
  
  Just put anti-homeless spikes on the toilet seats
  
  Why not let people fuck though?
- Yeah, here in Germany we usually have kinda big (30cm or so) openings at the bottom and at the top, but it's impossible to accidentally look through those due to their position.
  The side openings of the doors are usually completely closed or it's a very small slit, you definetly cannot look through them.
- In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.
  In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.
  
  If the goal is to allow observation, what's the point in having doors and cubicles at all?
  
  For what it's worth regardless of how it started, it's now enforced by ADA as an accessibility compliance issue, so that a wheelchair users feet can get under the stall door so they can get close enough to reach the latch. Seems like a stretch to me but I'm not a wheelchair user
  
  source?
  I think it's because it's a modular system that is cost effective, durable and repairable.
- That's false.
  
  I travel a lot for my job, maybe fifty different countries the past 5 or 6 years, and I've never seen toilet doors as silly and poorly-designed as US ones, except in places where they're just making do with what they have.

This is absolutely by design, and it is so users can be provided the absolute minimum of Privacy-ish^tm, but also explicitly so that management can easily verify if a stall is occupied in case any poors/junkies are camping out in there.
It's also so that public bathroom facilities can be spray-down, and you can wedge a brush in the gaps easily without there being crevices for mold/mildew and other... substances... to remain in.
- ... except the recently renovated bathrooms at the Denver Public Library have individual locking shit-shacks with communal sinks. It's not like junkies avoid the DPL, they have a box of Narcan bolted to the outside of the building.
- Yes that makes sense
  You seem to be misattributing the causes of homelessness with public restroom design, though, which are two different things. It's an arms race if anything.
  Idk maybe you live somewhere where there are a lot more problems with public toilets than I do
  Edit: who's mad in this thread lol
  
  I'm not attributing anything to anything, I am just stating an established fact as to why public bathroom stalls are designed that way. If you want to stick motives on people, find their original designers.

Does anyone else remember that very brief window where places like highway oases were putting in stalls where the door and walls only went up about halfway to the ceiling, making it so that if you were taking a dump, everyone could just watch you from the chest up?
- Sheesh, I just imagine imagine happening to walk past around the time some hairy slob is standing up to wipe his ass.
- Thankfully I must have avoided whatever business were doing this.
  However, I have had the experience of attending schools that had weird urinal designs.
  There was one where the urinals looked like regular toilets but without tanks or lids. They also didn’t have dividers and were placed in a position where anyone walking in the bathroom or using the sink got a full view.
  There were other schools that had the “trough.” Just a six foot long piss bucket.
- Did people just slowly turn to the other people to make eye contact while blastin a dook?
  
  It was a long time ago, my memory is hazy, but I walked in and walked right back out.
  
  Verses Mode, Free-For-All pooping.
- hah! I went to military boarding high school and the old, OLD dividers were like that, no door. These were so old they were made of that black slate like an old school lab bench. Luckily I spent only one semester doing the "poop with friends" before they installed standard dividers.

It’s for surprise genital examinations to ensure you’re not trans /s

US moment