A town in Wales doesn’t hold the opinion that a toilet is a romantic baby-making pedestal upon which you can also park your bare arse and take a dump, and has implemented measures to quash such behaviour.
The cubicles will be outfitted with weight-sensitive floors, allowing sensors to detect if there’s more than one person inside, at which point it will dampen the flames of passion that were so intense that they lead you into a public shithouse to begin with, with a big jet of water.
This will presumably spurt out from the toilet or another source, but given the spirit with which theses plans are being made, the former seems more fitting. An alarm will sound – hopefully comically loud – and the door will open. If that’s your very specific kink, the town of Porthcawl’s bogs are for you.
The system is also intended to deter other behaviour that isn’t emptying your bladder or bowels, like smoking – again, not sure why sparking up a ciggie is a more attractive prospect inside of a public bathroom – and drug-use.
As a delightfully Demolition Man-esque addition, both the walls and floors will be graffiti resistant.
The cubicles’ defence protocols will also be activated if someone’s been in there for too long, on the assumption that they’re sleeping rough, and not just taking a really long shit.
So if you’re feeling backed up, it’s probably best not to take your chances. An additional time-sensitive lock will kick in at night and open up the toilets again in the morning.
The price tag on the project is £170,000 ($300,000), and it sounds like it’s just in a single location for now, with no further details yet on how ‘normal people’ – i.e. those actually using the loos for their intended purpose – can be assured they won’t fall foul of the toilet’s newfangled features. It’ll be a fun learning curve by the sounds of things.
“Rebuilding the public toilets is an important element of Porthcawl Town Council’s ambition to ensure that Porthcawl is a great place to live, work and to visit,” said town councillor Mike Clarke, who seems to have some pretty high expectations when it comes to the influence a large public outhouse can really contribute to a locale, but good luck with that.
If they really wanted to effect change, they’d just pop an ED-209 inside as a toilet attendant and be done with. What could go wrong?
[Sky News]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.