The Corvair was a good car. I owned 2 of them.
The first was a 63 with swing-axle rear suspension. It
would outcorner a Triumph Spitfire.
People just didn't know how to drive a vehicle
with oversteer.

w_tom wrote:

How the economy works. Industry is relatively free of
regulation until MBAs and other 'only we top management are
important' types take over. Then we have events such as 'burn
them alive' Pinto, 'tip over' Corvair, Beverly Hills Supper
Club fire, Three Mile Island, and Firestone tires (twice!).
Then government must step in and regulate the hell out of
them. Problem is that once regulation is applied, it must
remain. For example, we must make the accounting industry top
management personally responsible for the integrity of their
audits - because they (especially Arthur Andersen)
intentionally committed fraud and changed their rule to make
fraud easier. Would not longer matter that accounting
industry changes. Once regulations are applied, they must
remain - according to history.

We still don't hold the accounting industry responsible and
still let them mostly make their own rules. IOW where we
really need regulation, legalized bribes (called campaign
contributions) quickly undermined the task.

However most electrical standards are not big government.
UL, IEEE, ISO, CBEM, NEC, etc are private, non-profit
standards organizations. Even with FCC regulations, the trend
is to constantly avoid regulating what could be accomplished
by non-government standards organizations.

In this case, the arc fault breaker - a UL standard - might
have significantly helped avoid the fire. That has only been
required for less than 1 year.

Jeff Wisnia wrote:
I agree with you completely. It was just cynical wishful thinking on my
part to expect many people, most of which have probably heard the terms
"electrical fire" or "electrocuted" more than once in their lives, to
stop and think first before sticking their plugs in whatever hole is
handy. But then, common sense isn't all that common, is it?

At this point, even though I'm fervently against "big government"
protecting people from their own stupidity, I'd agree with a federal law
barring the sale of those non circuit breaker protected plug strips.
Course, then we'd have to deal with some fool sticking two triple tap
expanders into the cube tap end of a 10 amp extension cord, wouldn't we?

Maybe Darwinism will eventually improve upon the situation.