Legal ‘sex booths’ where customers ‘drive-in’ to meet prostitutes have been hailed a great success by officials in Zurich, Switzerland.

The booths look like car garages but contain wooden benches for customers who prefer to have sex outside of their cars.

They were installed in 2013 after 52% of people in the city voted in favour of the £1,557,020 investment by Zurich city council.

5th anniversary

On Sunday, the sex booths celebrated their fifth anniversary with Zurich government spokeswoman Nadeen Schuster telling USA Today they have been ‘effective in preventing violence against sex workers and human trafficking’.

Prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since the 1940s but before the booths were installed, most sex workers stayed on the city’s riverfront, with locals complaining about seeing them on street corners.

Alarm

Now the wooden structures give them a safe place to work away from the centre of the city and are fitted with an alarm so the prostitutes can contact the police if they need to.

Drivers – who must be alone in their vehicle – enter along a marked route while women wait in shelters along the roadside.