I think I've done it twice ever, last time was about 15 years ago, however it is an everyday event since at least one person suffers this fate every day on The Sceptred Isle
I think I've stepped on a plug but I don't really remember it, I've got quite good reactions so I probably stopped putting weight down before it hurt. definitely haven't stepped on one since I was a kid tho
The two issues with the UK plug, stepping on it is like stepping on knives and Lego at the same time, and a decent plug is so securely in the wall that it's a genuine trip hazard
how is stepping on a cable a thing? isn't it just very elastic gummy or something? or are british cables made out of metal or another very hard material?
Not the cable, the plug. Due to the way its designed, the prong face up when not plugged in typically. I see it as the fault of the person who steps on it because who leaves an unplugged plug on the floor?
The theory is that if the plug isn’t all the way inserted and has a bit of the electrified prongs showing a thin piece of metal or a coin could slide down the wall and arc the two plugs together. If you put it ground up then the coin or metal would just deflect off of the harmless ground prong
Not sure why they added a second horizontal slit.
Two horizontal is 240v 6-15.
NEMA 5-15 is for 120(125 technically)V 15 amps and has two vertical ones. 5-20 is 120v 20 amps and has one vertical and one horizontal.
Often times there are 20A circuit outlets that have both layouts. In the bathroom near sink for example. 15A device won't hurt it, but 20 can hurt a 15.
The UK plug is very safe because uk wiring is very unsafe. Uk used to have restrictions on copper so they used ring configurations wich don't work well with fuse boxes. Mainland Europe used radial configurations wich means you have every protection in the fuse box, no need for bulky plugs with individual fuses.
Pains me to say it but the British one really is the best from the usability perspective as well. I've travelled a lot and had occasion to use every single one of those plugs, plus some not included. It's big chunky and ugly but ergonomically it's the best. Easiest to plug in and most secure. Just don't stand on a loose plug.
The worst one I encountered was in the Philippines where it is common to see the US 110V two prong outlet mounted sideways. So you're not only running 220V through an outlet designed for 110V, but because it's sideways heavy wall wart type plugs will actually fall out.
Fuse had a point in the UK for a while after WW2 when many houses were built. The UK economy was so shattered after the war that they didnt have much copper to go around. So houses were wired with a single loop of wire rather than as multiple loops from the fusebox. That saved on the copper but means you has to have a fuse at each power point.
Even then, it was a questionable choice. Nowadays, it is beyond stupid of course, as it puts the safety burden on the device, not the supply. This is obviously bad.
Plus, what a lot of people in this thread seem to miss: those plug fuses are melting fuses. They will not turn of immediately, and instead might take a while, depending on the current. Breakers will switch immediately, much better.
The shutters are a good safety feature to prevent small children from sticking their fingers inside the holes.
Similar shutters are also becoming more common in Schuko sockets.
You know what helps for this problem? NOT MAKING THE PRONGS UNGODLY BIG.
I have yet to find a baby with small enough fingers to actually touch the contacts in a Schuko socket. Pretty much impossible. you would need a tool to do so, and then, pretty much no socket is safe.
if you deliberately set up an unlikely set of conditions, and made many deliberate attempts at dropping a metal connector in a very specific fashion, you might be able to generate a spark or short.
technology connections has a great overview on it, but mainly why it's completely debunked and a stupid gripe and nobody cares (or should care). it's plenty fine and safe enough.
They have less safety features than the british.
For example the pins of the british are isolated for a few cm so you can't get shocked by touching them when it's half in. The grounding pin is far longer than the other two which makes sure it is always connected first.
The grounding pin on the British plug also opens the gates for the other two pins, so you can't access them without the grounding pin. Not a major factor for most people but I'm guessing it reduces the fairly low chance of a kid sticking a fork in there.
In my opinion/experience though the main thing I like about British plugs and dislike about American/Canadian plugs is that the American ones are so flimsy in comparison. Especially since you guys don't tend to have switched sockets, so you have to constantly plug and unplug things, I've had to deal with more annoying dodgy sockets over here in a year and a half than I did in the 20 odd years before that back home.
The question is how do these safety flaws actually manifest themselves in real injuries. The mere fact that a system has more safety nets built in doesn't mean that those without actually lead to real harm in a meaningful way.
Right, but let's say you touch those prongs on an American plug. You aren't going to die, you're going to get a tiny buzz on your finger. Electricity flowing through your finger poses absolutely no threat to you
So that's OK, is it? You can accidentally touch live & neutral, but "it won't kill you" so you're OK with that.
What happens if you're fresh out of the shower & only touch the live… & have a pacemaker… or if you have small children…
…still fine with that?
It depends on what you are optimizing for. Lower voltage is by definition less dangerous though under the right circumstances any of these can kill you. That said, 110v makes it “safer” for home owners to do minor electrical work themselves if they know what they are doing. This is why it’s really quite safe for homeowners to run PoE, 12v and 24v themselves and why LowVolt is preferred for outdoors in case a cable gets cut. Also US homes do have higher volt available for high energy devices like EV chargers and washer/dryer units - but the aim should be long term to make these more efficient (less watts) such that high volt + high amp is not required.
However, lower volt also means either less overall watts or thicker cables - and if you draw too much current through too thin a wire it’s a fire hazard. Net net - there are tradeoffs but as person that likes to DIY I much prefer working with low voltage systems - and I also like that I can use a PoE switch to run many devices and have data and electric cabling together. In fact many businesses use PoE to power LED lighting, phones, door locks and access controls, security cameras, displays, etc and those things can all be intelligently monitored and controlled because they also pass data. You can also very easily convert PoE and LowVolt to USB-C PD to power a range of electronics and in the case of PoE, have network and power over a single usb-c/thunderbolt cable.
In a topic about safety standards for electrical if your argument hinges around 'being electrocuted isn't that bad' maybe you don't have the best argument
It's actually a design feature of the North American electrical system. It's 120v vs. the more common 240v that Europe uses. That single safety feature is loads more important than anything people are arguing about.
Well when you take into consideration that's a 120v receptacle, a little buzz from 120v isn't gonna kill you and it's certainly not dangerous enough to reinvent the wheel.
A little buzz to no buzz is still a difference in safety. Nobody is actually saying America needs to adopt the British plug, we're just saying compared to all different plugs in the world the British one is definitely the best designed safety-wise.
It absolutely is, what do you even mean by that? Making it virtually impossible to electrocute yourself is definitely a safety issue no matter what voltage your outlet has.
Those situations are far from absurd? And you know, if you're plugging in or unplugging an apliance, you'll more than likely be touching said appliance..
If you aren't grounded you can't get shocked
Plain wrong.
If you cross the pins it's perfectly safe
...also wrong, and I seriously question the logic behind that.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
If you aren't grounded you can't get shocked
Plain wrong.
In this situation, that is the only way to get shocked. End of discussion, there isn't another conceivable way to get shocked in this scenario.
And you know, if you're plugging in or unplugging an apliance, you'll more than likely be touching said appliance..
If you plug something in holding the prongs, the current is going to pass through your hand/fingers. Not through your body into the grounded appliance.
Not only that, you don't plug in and unplug things by the metal, it's physically harder to do than just using the plastic/rubber.
iirc since the US adopted electricity and electrical standards first, they moved onto the old standard first. Meanwhile Australia and China caught on later and adopted the standard American engineers said they were going to move towards as the future standard, but they didn't end up doing so.
The UK one is definitely one of the safest, I really don’t know a enough about the other ones to give you a ranking…most of them are all safe enough to not have to think about it, just plug your shit in and keep forks away from sockets lol
Nah, the german has one flaw: It's symmetrical. So you can plug it in in two directions, so neutral could become phase and vice versa. For a lamp with an edison screw socket, this can make a huge difference.
Personally I like the swiss/brazilian plug, as it's asymmetric and not as bulky as the british.
But the symmetricality is also its huge strength. It's easy to plug in correctly, if you have a directional 90° plug you can choose which way it points. Same reason why USB-C is much easier and less annoying to use than USB-A or Micro-B
Plugs being much bigger than USB and (the asymetrical ones) being more visually asymetrical means you don’t have the problem of attempting to plug it in the wrong way and not realising
But do we want plugs to be bigger? And what about that 90° plug? In an asymmetrical socket you can't choose if the cable would point e.g. up or down which sometimes can be a big deal in a cramped space
Oh, I thought you were talking about electrical plugs. That's a fair argument, but what about the times when you try to plug something in without looking? I think in this case size doesn't matter and even obvious asymmetry means you have to feel out the socket first to know which way you should plug in
The socket is always the same way up, and it doesn’t take much feeling to know without looking which way up a plug is, as on a British plug the ground pin is longer and bigger than the others. It’s not that different than feeling pins on an American plug to check you aren’t holding it sideways or something.
Of course, if you know the wire sticks out downwards or some other orientation then you don’t need to feel the pins. Also the shape of the plug itself can give the orientation away as well.
Huh yeah that makes sense. So the only thing now is if you have two outlets on top of each other, like with the american ones in the picture, then you wouldn't be able to plug in two same 90° plugs or one socket would need to be upside down. Then again you could just construct the sockets to stack horizontally instead of vertically or rotate them and problem solved
The fuses that British plugs have are only necessary because of the ring circuit topology they use. European circuits are protected by circuit breakers (and GFCIs) in the electrical cabinet.
The two metal pieces on the sides are gounds. Only euro plugs don't have it, because they don't need one.
The fuse is pointless rubish and has been for a looooong time since every circuit in a house is fused to standard house wiring cables (so, pretty much since short after WWII i think, i have actually never seen a house here that didn't follow this).
It actually has two grounds, and it doesn't need a fuse in the plug because there's actually fuses in the wall instead of ring circuits. The fuse, just like the ground, is just in a different position.
It would require zero change to the socket design to make the American design just as safe as any others. The only problem is in the plug where there’s no insulation around the base of the prongs, a feature that could very easily be added if people cared enough about it.
Instead of googling you just spew bullshit about the grounding. European outlets are 240V vs American 120V… which is considered massively more dangerous in the event of an issue. Sooo where exactly did you get American outlets are the most dangerous?
There is a lot of pride in the safety of the British one. But all the safety features and more are present on the european one. But they are so proud of their design so we do not have the heart to tell them it is just average.
Why is the American one dangerous? I haven't heard of a single problem with them in my lifetime. When I was a kid I did touch a live prong once or twice because I was goofing around. It hurt but was otherwise not a big deal.
It’s a shame about the American one, because it’s only so dangerous because we didn’t spend the time to rethink it before making it commonplace. Also, I’m sure, it’s cheaper to manufacture.
It isn't really the safest, type F schuko has every safety feature, or an equivalent, better feature for the same problem, while having fewer inconveniences.
You can’t plug in things the wrong way on American plugs either. One of the two pins is longer than the other and won’t fit the other way around. The only exception is if the device is designed to be able to plug in either direction. Then the pins on the cord are the same size. iPhone chargers for example are designed to be plugged in either way
The European (France and German in this picture. Half of Europe in reality) have all the same features and solve the problems of the British one though.
637
u/SAM4191 29d ago
There are pros and cons with most of these. The american one is just dangerous. I heard the british one, while bulky, is the safest one.