Taxis and ride shares are great transportation options. Whether you’re in a new city and don’t want to navigate the busy streets on your own or need a reliable way to get to your destination, hailing a car can be a convenient choice.

However, it does come with a few risks – one of them being coming in contact with germs.

“We do not live in a sterile environment,” said Dr Graham Snyder, the medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. “Surfaces all around us may have bacteria, fungi and viruses.”

A car is not the most spacious area, and there are many points in a vehicle that passengers and the driver may touch and potentially spread germs.

“The most common point that will generally contain germs are called ‘high-touch areas,’” said Kevin W. Garey, professor and chair at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. “As the name suggests, these will be the places that most people will touch when they enter a car.”

This means you can come in contact with germs when touching surfaces such as:

• The seat belt buckle.
• The door handles.
• Window buttons.

These tend to harbour the most germs because they are “nonporous and touched by every rider, which means microbes collect and transfer easily to hands,” explained Kelly A. Reynolds, chair of........

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