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Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia

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tooki:

--- Quote from: james_s on December 23, 2020, 05:48:53 pm ---
There exists a group of people for whom these sort of regulations seem to innately appeal though. For several years in the early 80s there was a law that cars sold in the US could not have a speedometer that went higher than 80 MPH, as if anyone would stop speeding simply because the needle won't go higher. The legislator who introduced that law said years later that she still believed that it saved lives, despite absolutely no data to suggest that.  :palm:  When I was a teenager one of my friends had a car with the 80 MPH speedo and he used to enjoy pegging the needle, if anything it encouraged speeding because it was possible to peg it all the way at the top while still being well within the capabilities of almost any car. Meanwhile even street legal race cars that some people did actually take to the track were compromised by the lack of a usable speedometer at higher speeds.

--- End quote ---
Real law, wrong explanation: it had nothing to do with safety, it was because of the fuel crisis. It was to encourage fuel savings (which it failed at, FWIW).

http://classic-car-history.com/85-mph-speedo.htm

tooki:

--- Quote from: KaneTW on December 24, 2020, 07:30:29 pm ---I find UK plugs to be overkill (a fuse _in the plug_ is too much, and they're unpleasantly pointy and heavy). Out of all plugs I've used, I've found Schuko to be the most comfortable. Secure fit, rounded prongs, ground easily accessible and guaranteed to make first contact. US plugs are by far my least favorite -- flimsy, exposed metal that you could easily touch with a finger, etc.

--- End quote ---
The fuse in UK plugs isn’t “too much”, it’s absolutely essential because behind those sockets are  circuits rated (and fused) for 32A. So instead of requiring every appliance to have a cord as thick as a garden hose, the plug is fused to prevent normal-size appliance cords from catching on fire if the appliance should short out.

I rather dislike the Schuko plug, IMHO it’s far too large and heavy for what it does. (Yes, it’s smaller than UK plugs, but that’s not setting the bar very high! :P)

Good quality US plugs and sockets are very nice to use. (Sadly, most US household sockets are cheap, and loosen over time. Nobody, and I mean nobody, follows the manufacturers’ recommendation to regularly replace them every 10 years. Commercial and industrial-grade sockets (of the same plug type) are designed to handle FAR more insertion cycles without loosening.) As far as safety, I don’t think they’ve proven to be hugely dangerous in practice. But I’d love to see them adopt semi-insulated prongs — the Australian plug has flat prongs almost identical in width and thickness, and they’ve been semi-insulated for years.

Honestly, I actually think Switzerland has one of the nicest residential plug designs. It’s compact, attractive, and safe, and has a really clever system of backward compatible 3-phase sockets. (Not an issue of national pride: I’m an American living here.) Brazil’s new socket is nearly identical, but with different spacing that makes it incompatible. Brazil’s design, in turn, is a slightly modified version of an international socket standard that never got implemented anywhere.

tooki:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on December 24, 2020, 02:28:15 am ---And here in the US there are quite a few safety rules made without considering whether they actually improve safety.

--- End quote ---
That’s everywhere: politicians need to be seen as “doing something about [problem]” so they pass a law addressing that one thing without evaluating follow-on effects or the big picture in general.


--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on December 24, 2020, 02:28:15 am ---One that I believe has finally been corrected was one that forbid employers from providing iced or chilled water to their workers.  It had a huge impact on me and my fellow workers as I worked my way through school in and outdoor steel fabrication yard where we didn't really know how hot it was because the available glass bulb thermometers went to the top and popped.  Something well over 120 F.  It finally was recognized that the rule had propagated from a time before mechanical refrigeration, when ice came from lakes and ponds cut and stored during the winter for summer use.  And when no real provisions were made to assure that the ice wasn't cut from animal latrines or contaminated by rodents in storage.

--- End quote ---
Citation needed.

By the time the US started passing food safety and workplace safety laws, ice harvesting was already dead, since mechanical refrigeration had fully replaced harvested ice with manufactured ice.

What is true is that ice water can be dangerous in extremely hot environments. For that reason, some employers might have chosen to not offer it. That or they were cheapskates.

tszaboo:

--- Quote from: Rick Law on December 23, 2020, 06:58:05 pm ---An EE firm as it is today would need a number of lawyers in the building already.  Keep adding more regulation will eventually disable the entire industry.  There must be some rules.  Where and how we draw the line is the question.

--- End quote ---
Oh, I know about this, trust me. <--- that's my job.
I have to put warning signs on the electronics:
"Do not open when an explosive atmosphere is present"
I usually have 3-4 warning labels on it, one is not to rub the plastic parts, because it might be ecstatically charged. Most of them is ridiculous, unrealistic for the most cases. I mean who is going to take a screwdriver and disassemble some electronics device, standing in the middle of a propane cloud, right? The testing for this kind of equipment is expensive and long, and your product usually needs some sort of modification. And that's fine, at least I sleep well.

Because all these things (even that tiny screw sealing the battery compartment) cost time and money. And that's something that companies hate to spend. If you can skip some sort of safety measure, there will be a manager, who tells you (the product designer) to skip it. It could be industrial electronics for dangerous areas or a toy train, it could kill people. As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.

james_s:

--- Quote from: NANDBlog on December 24, 2020, 10:23:41 pm ---As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.

--- End quote ---

Bullshit. There needs to be some regulation, but there is already way, way too much regulation in the world and much of it does nothing BUT cause headaches. Over-regulation ruins products that could be good, and takes perfectly good products that worked off the market and replaces them with crap. Want a specific example? Try using one of the idiotic CARB-compliant portable gas (petrol) cans that are mandated across the USA now. They are not allowed to have a vent (because vapor may escape) and they are required to be "child proof". The result is cans that blow up like a balloon if left in the sun then spray gasoline vapor everywhere when you manage to release the nozzle, an act which usually requires 3 hands. Then because there can't be a vent, as gas pours out the air has to go in the nozzle so they go GLUG gurgle gurgle GLUG gurgle GLUG and dump gas all over the place when trying to fill the small tanks on portable equipment. If you want to use one to put gas in a car forget it, the stupid nozzles won't fit properly in a lot of car gas fillers, and if you do manage to get it in they flow so slowly that your arm will fall off trying to hold the thing up. They are absolutely useless garbage that accomplish the exact opposite of everything they the new regulation was supposed to do. It's so bad that an array of companies sprouted up selling "water jugs" and nozzles for said jugs which are quite obviously gas cans but can't be sold as such. I HATE excessive safety regulations, I'd roll back a huge range of regulations given the chance. If you want to buy some overly regulated headache inducing piece of crap that is your right, but don't force it on me.

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