General > General Technical Chat
Lighweight AC line cords?
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IDEngineer:

--- Quote from: Siwastaja on January 31, 2024, 08:53:39 am ---Those should not be available in the first place; they should be illegal. Something being dangerous and still being allowed is not a good reason to allow more dangerous crap into market. It's harder to ban something once it's widespread.

--- End quote ---
Where does it end? Should we ban motorcycles? Bicycles? What about drunk driving... which should we ban, cars or liquor? Kitchen knives cut a lot of people. Hand tools. Soldering irons. Most sports have risk. Medicines taken at home instead of professionally administered at a doctor's office.

There are a lot of "dangerous" things. It's a big scary world out there. Lightweight line cords aren't even near the top of the list.
Gyro:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on January 31, 2024, 03:32:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on January 31, 2024, 08:53:39 am ---Those should not be available in the first place; they should be illegal. Something being dangerous and still being allowed is not a good reason to allow more dangerous crap into market. It's harder to ban something once it's widespread.

--- End quote ---
Where does it end? Should we ban motorcycles? Bicycles? What about drunk driving... which should we ban, cars or liquor? Kitchen knives cut a lot of people. Hand tools. Soldering irons. Most sports have risk. Medicines taken at home instead of professionally administered at a doctor's office.

There are a lot of "dangerous" things. It's a big scary world out there. Lightweight line cords aren't even near the top of the list.

--- End quote ---

Maybe we should restrict "dangerous" to things that can burn your house down while you sleep - Hey that covers those fake imported ebike batteries too!  :-+
IDEngineer:
Cigarettes. Candles. Fireplaces. All gas appliances including cooktops, ovens, furnaces, water heaters.

Their electric equivalents can also start fires. While you sleep!

Ask the airline industry about lithium batteries. You likely have them all over your house.

Where does it end?
Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on January 31, 2024, 03:32:18 pm ---Should we ban motorcycles?

--- End quote ---

If motorcycles burst randomly in flames when non-technical people use them as intended, and if there is a technical solution which costs like $0.10 to implement, yes, then we should ban motorcycles which lack this obvious protection. This is how civilized first-world societies operate.

Nearly every other country has banned non-fused extension cords not rated to the rating of the socket, and we manage just fine, no dystopia as a result. Your strawman is just ridiculous. The importance of fusing is understood pretty much everywhere, and it's mandatory everywhere for a very good reason. You have one weird exception to this rule, and it's causing real issues. You would lose nothing by fixing it. A safety device on a knife, on the other hand, would render it pretty much inoperable. And a knife does not fly and stab you on its own while you sleep anyway.

Also I'm pretty sure you have some standards so that a lighter can be recalled if it bursts in flames when used like one uses a lighter.
Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on January 31, 2024, 04:45:28 pm ---All gas appliances including cooktops, ovens, furnaces, water heaters.

--- End quote ---

... safety of all of which is regulated. Random result from Google: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/08/19/2019-17512/performance-requirements-for-residential-gas-furnaces-and-boilers-advance-notice-of-proposed . This is just an example. I don't know how your legislative system works as a whole, but I'm 150% sure there are some legal requirements for safety devices, exactly to prevent these devices from killing you while you sleep.

Regarding your question, where does it end, well I would like it to end at the point where the residual risk is already small enough, can be clearly communicated, and any further mitigation would be either prohibitively expensive or somehow render the device useless, significantly less energy efficient, hard to use, annoying.

Where exactly is matter of taste. Some want complete nanny state, others don't, I'm in the latter group. Your taste is colossally bad, though. Following the usual fusing practices in electrical circuits has none of these downsides. You are then "allowed" to illegally bypass the fuses if you so wish, to live "on the edge".
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