Helen Deborah Vecht wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 4 Sep 2004:

I am too large for quite a few bus seats. At a whopping 5'5½"(166cm)
tall, I find my long??!! legs mean my knees are crammed against the seat
in front, even on some modern buses. My hips are too wide for some of
the seats too but I'm not overweight.

It's not necessarily how tall you are that dictates whether you can fit your
legs into bus seats (or plane seats, or theatre seats, etc, etc) but how
long your femur (thigh bone) is. Helen has trouble fitting in her 166cm
height yet she may find herself crammed in next to somebody exactly the same
height as she is who has no problem at all because he or she has shorter
femurs, thus requiring less horizontal distance from hip to knee when
seated. It's all down to genetics!

That being said, I don't know anyone over 8 years old who can sit
comfortably in those cursed little PDs that Stagecoach East London brought
in from Oxford. Travelling anywhere twice in those things was enough to
send anyone into the arms of the nearest car dealer.

"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message

I am overweight, but not as badly as some people, and I find modern train
seats so tiny that a journey of more than ten minutes or so is a penance!

I'm not grossly overweight, either and usually find the width ok in Summer
but Winter's coming on and then it will be miserable trying to fit people in
big overcoats and parkas side by side in narrow seats without the person on
the aisle side having one buttock suspended in space!

While we're on the subject of stupid seat design, does anybody know why so
many train seats are so low down and close to the floor? They're not
comfortable & for anyone with a back problem or arthritic hips, the seats on
(eg) the class 315 stock that runs out of Liverpool St are difficult and
painful to get out of.

K-Type.