On Monday, 29 June 2015 03:18:41 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 28/06/2015 17:47, nt wrote:
On Sunday, 28 June 2015 06:50:57 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 26/06/2015 19:54, nt wrote:
On Friday, 26 June 2015 16:23:39 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
200 something deaths a year in fires now, 20 something from
shock
I said injury, not deaths.
We know 
So we appear to be in agreement that deaths from either cause are
very low. Yet I don't hear you claiming fire protection systems
including smoke alarms are also a waste of money?
A few pounds per family to save most of 1000 deaths a year is a good
Where do you get 1000 deaths per year from? In 2013 - 14 there were 258
dwelling fire fatalities (from a total of 40375 dwelling fires)
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...F_Version_.pdf
As I said, before smoke alarms became common there were about 1000 deaths a year. The main change since then has been widespread use of smoke alarms. Its reasonable to conclude that with no smoke alarm the risk is nearer 1000/yr than the current 200 odd.
deal. £3 x 20m houses = £60m Lives saved if the alarms survive 10-20
Where do you get £3 from? Even a single cheap detector is typically more
than that, and that is far from a recommended install. (i.e. mains
interlinked alarms in all of the main circulation spaces in the home)
but its what most people use. If you want to calculate costs & payback for other options you can.
yrs ave = 15yrs x 1000pa (number before smoke alarms were common) =
15,000 lives = £4,000 per life saved. Batteries increase that, but
still a fine deal.
In the same period, there were 7798 non fatal casualties from dwelling
fires.
(compare this to the 350,000 / year serious injury rate from a total of
2.5m electrical shocks!)
http://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org...ch/statistics/
the relvant line there is:
'People receiving a mains voltage electric shock per year (15+): 2.5 million*
Of whom received a serious injury: 350,000**'
If that is correct, we would have, with average life expectancy apx 80, 80x350,000 people in the uk who have been seriously injured by shock. That's 28 million! The most basic sanity check shows that to be wildly unrealistic.
And to make that more precise, since shock protection measures have greatly improved in the last 80 years, the actual figure would be far higher, if their claim were true.
You always need to look at the source and assess the data. Its pretty obvious they're a group promoting increase of electrical safety, and pretty obvious that a lot of people mislead & even lie routinely when they have an agenda to pursue.
I seem to recall someone round here was very fond of
plastering domestic fire safety stats into every wiki article
given the chance. Why the double standards?
why the claim of double standards? how would stating the known
facts possibly be that? Its not even worth answering.
I feel like I am talking to a truculent five year old, with his
fingers in his ears, going ner ner, can't hear you.
ah, ad hominem. I think what you mean is that the point(s) we see as
key are different.
No, I mean we both agree that death rates are not a good indication of
the risks involved, and yet you repeatedly cite them as justification of
your position.
For good reason. These kind of analyses are routinely based on death rates as they're far more reliable data, and a much more serious problem.
You keep bleating on about death rates as justification for your
(absurd) position. And yet everyone acknowledges that the death
rate alone would not be a justification for wide spread use of
RCDs
we agree on that then
(or smoke alarms for that matter).
the figures do not support that position.
Do you mean the figures indicate far more strongly the importance of RCDs?
I don't mean anything of the sort. I mean the figures above show smoke alarms to be a good deal.
I am however suggesting that everyone who lives in a property
without RCD protection *should* update to include them as a
resonable priority. This is because *millions* of people receive
electric shocks each year. Hundreds of thousands of them require
hospital treatment. Tens of thousands of those receive a
significant injury, many have ongoing and debilitating effects.
Your injury data is wrong due to you not undersanding the situation.
Can you provide alternate data?
I'm not going to look for it. That does not mean we should base a decision on data that's patently false.
Can you sand it better for us?
RCDs represent a very cheap way of reducing a cause of injury that
affects a significant number of people in the country every year.
There are few widespread risks that are so easy to deal with in
such a low cost "fit and forget" way.
and a non sequitur.
Explain
I already have. I've shown how I assessed whether RCDs were
worth fitting.
Even if your logic were sound, that does not explain the "non
sequiter" claim.
feel free to listen to the reply first
You have carried out an assessment ignoring the most relevant parts
of the data, and focussed your attention on a very small subset.
in your opinion. Many don't see risk assessment that way. Your faulty
injury assessment is a good example of why.
Why do you believe the injury assessment is faulty?
You said in a previous post what it really was. The NHS routinely admits people and sends ambulances for people that are uninjured in situations where they know there is some risk of a situation turning out to be fatal, even when the risk is quite small. So it is with shock. The figure you gave is far from the number actually injured.
You simply did not address the necessary points in order to reach
a reason based case on the question of whether its a good things
to install your RCDs.
Maybe some of us just aren't into risk assessment.
You think... I wonder who?
I've offered a clear risk & cost asessment,
Which only demonstrated you have failed to asses the facts.
rather it confirms that we differ on what's most important, and what
actually are the facts. Your injury stats are, I'm sorry to say,
bunk.
So provide better data... with sources!
Sorry but no, I have way more useful things to do, and really I'm not concerned about it. If you want to provide a case for retrofitting RCDs you're free to.
It results in people spending on tiny risks and consequently
neglecting the big ones. No-one has the resources to address all
risks, so the sensible approach is to prioritise the ones we can
reduce the most.
I would agree with that.
That is evidently not RCDs, unless you've effectively tackled a
fairly long list of others already.
Much depends on what is on your list. Fix the loose stair carpet at
the top of the stairs, do something about the ancient boiler that
makes you feel all drowsy every time its fired up. If there is
water running down the walls, and mould everywhere you may have
more urgent fish to fry.
the top 10 killers or death risks aren't those things, at least for
over 99% of us. Most people have not even dealt with the top few.
You seem to be confusing statistics applicable to the general population
with those applicable to an "at risk" subset.
The top 10 apply to everyone.
CO poisoning is not a top 10 killer (see you are back to deaths again!)
in the general population. That is because faulty gas appliances (or
other sources of CO in the home) are not common in the general
population. However in this case I was citing the subset of people that
actually *have* a faulty gas appliance. Here the risks of CO poisoning
will be many *orders of magnitude* greater than those for the general
population.
there's little point discussing that, it has nothing to do with the main point
I say put the time & money towards doing something about one of those
instead, you'll get over 1000x the risk reduction benefit.
Do you have some examples of these injury risks,
As I've made clear all along, they're death risks. I can't believe you're still confused about that.
and how you plan to
reduce those risks by 1000x?
Why would anyone try to reduce them 1000fold?
Reducing a risk over 1000x as large is over 1000x as beneficial as fitting RCDs, which in truth have only a very very tiny chance of saving your life.
NT