"Smitty Two" wrote in message
news
All right, I really just have one question. I know I'm gonna take a lot
of heat for this; I have before. But I really don't want some long
discussion. I just want to know one thing. Does *anyone* here know how
many persons are killed accidentally by electrocution, annually, in the
U.S.?

If so, can you now subtract the number who are killed by high tension
lines or other high voltages (let's say over 240 volts AC) in an
industrial setting? I did read somewhere that 86% of "electrocution
injuries" (uh, electrocution means death, so I guess they meant electric
shock injuries) are to children aged one to four. So lets leave them
out, too, because we aren't letting our children repair our televisions,
are we?

The thing is, I know safety is a good thing, and I know that it's fine
to caution people about working with and using electricity safely. But,
and here's where I need to swear I'm not a troll, this whole safety
thing, and the dangers of electricity, are exaggerated. Greatly. I think.

Let's see, I've been shocked by 120 VAC about twenty times. By 240 VAC
about twice. By 30,000 volts in televisions about ten times. By a nice
big fat 450 VDC capacitor bank in the big tube amplifiers we used to
build, about five or six times.

Of those, the amps were the worst. Knocked me clear across the room
every time, cussing and sweating.

All right, I'm careless, and a perfect example of why you ought to be
careful. But I'm not dead.

I brought this up once before, a few years back, and took a bunch of
nonsense from people telling stories about people turning into charcoal.
But none of those anecdotes were about people puttering around at home,
sticking forks into toasters and fingers into televisions and breaking
off ground plugs because they can't find the damn adapter, which they
wouldn't have grounded to the screw anyway. They were all stories about
crane operators hitting overhead lines and maintenance guys poking into
the 480 volt mains with big screwdrivers.

Killed. Dead. By electrocution. At home, or in a non-heavy industry
workplace. Annually. In the U.S. Not counting babies. Does anyone know?

Smitty

I know what you're saying. Over here in the UK, we have now developed a
culture of "protect everyone against everything, and don't let them be
responsible for their own stupidity ". There is no longer any such a thing
as an 'accident'. It's always someone's fault. There have been cases of
people trying to sue restaurants after burning themselves on hot coffee,
because nowhere did it say " Coffee hot - may burn ". Obviously, real safety
issues should be a proper concern of designers, and electrical safety is
probably one of the more important. As the stuff is invisible, and Joe
Public as a whole does not understand its dangers, it's probably right and
proper that there are serious protections against electric shock, and the
death by electrocution that may ensue, and serious penalties for those
flouting any laws or official design criteria pertaining to such safety.

I have probably had a similar amount of shocks to you over my career (
bearing in mind that all line power shocks are of at least 230 / 240v here )
and they have always thrown me off - with one exception, and that was caused
by a lack of care. We had a large number of graphics terminals to supply to
a defence contractor, and these things always had crappily set up monitors
on them when they arrived from the factory, so always needed tweaking. I had
all the benches full of soak testing units, and had moved onto the floor. I
had my right hand in the depths, at full stretch, and my left arm resting
along the open metal chassis surround of the CRT. I leant to my left to look
at the display, and my right hand went against the ( uninsulated ) terminals
of the power socket. My right arm went immediately rigid, and I sort of fell
forward into the thing, only making the contact more solid and worse.
Although it was probably only a second or two, I promise you, I felt myself
dying.

I don't know how, but I forced myself off eventually. For the next two hours
or so, that right arm did nothing but hang uselessly at my side. I could
make it do nothing. This was a really scary experience, and made me much
more aware of the very real dangers of electricity, but you could look at it
and say " Yeah, sure, but you didn't die, did you ? ". You are right, of
course, but I was only young at the time, and reasonably fit. If my heart
wasn't quite that strong, I really don't think that I would have survived.
So, whilst a lot of electrical safety regulations protect against stupid
people, I don't have a problem with that, as I was once one of them, who
wouldn't have suffered the problem if there had been a regulation at the
time in the US, where these units came from, that stated that input socket
terminals should be sheathed in an insulating material ...

Arfa