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HeyBub[_3_]

hr(bob) wrote:

Why would you want to defeat a safety function? It took a while for
UL to get that requirement, but it has saved many lives over the past
25 years.

How many is "many"?

Let's say each person plugs in one thing a day and 1/3 of the time that
person has to do it over or check beforehand, thereby wasting one second of
time.

300,000,000 people x 1 second / 3600 seconds/hr = 83,000 hours of lost
productivity per day or 22 million man-hours per year. At even the minimum
wage (say $9/hr), that's $210 million of wealth destroyed each year by
polarized plugs.

According to the CPSC, about 400 people are electrocuted each year. Some of
these deaths are due to coming in contact with overhead lines, and the like,
so assume 300 are due to defective consumer equipment or equipment used
improperly. Now suppose that number doubles as a result of non-polarized
plugs. The value of each life saved then works out to (mumble-mumble, carry
the three...) about $700,000.

Somewhere there's a trade-off point.