240V @ 30A is the highest on the planet. You consistently ignored current rating, despite recognizing that without the special, overengineered fused plugs, appliances would be exposed to them. Your inclusion of this is dishonest.

So your argument is that if you remove a necessary safety features the system is suddenly less safe. Well fucking shocker. That’s no different from me saying that if you used a ring breaker on a Japanese branch, it would be exposed to 30A and just as dangerous, and therefore concluding the Japanese system must be worse.

It’s a stupid hypothetical that tells you nothing about either system.

Also, at the point where a device is drawing short circuit current, EITHER breaker will trip most instantly, and whether the threshold is 30 or 20, the device is a smoking pile of burnt plastic afterwards anyway.

And again, breakers aren’t designed to protect devices, and devices aren’t designed to withstand some kind of massive fault tolerance based on the circuit they’re plugged into. No device on planet earth is designed with the concept of "it has to survive even when a 20A short circuit happens. And even if so, it would just be “short circuit” in general. Because as I’ve pointed out, a dead short will trip EVERY breaker, instantly, period. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, 7A rated power cords are completely legal to sell for use on 20A Japanese outlets.

But if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. But specifically. I want specific and concrete measures and steps that you aledge are taken specifically to guard devices based on the fusing of the circuit they are attached too.

The claim you’re rebutting is not the claim that was made. The claim that was made was that each UK circuit has higher current than a comparable North American circuit. Which is true. A UK household circuit is at 30A, while Canadian/US/Mexican is at 15/20A. American and UK homes use roughly the same amount of total power, but the American home typically distributes that power with roughly 4 times as many, lower-current circuits.

Sure, the current on one ring is greater than that on one branch, that’s is true, I’ll concede that. I just consider it irrelevant. The total current coming in at the terminal connection though is half as much in the UK than the US. The US commonly has 100, 150 or 200Amp service panels.

The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs.

No it doesn’t. Because you’re laboruimg under the delusion that breakers are designed to protect anything beyond the internal wiring of your walls. They don’t give a shit about anything else. That is their singular and sole purpose. Look for example at America. America has UNFUSED multi cords rated for 7A. There’s literally nothing stopping you in America from plugging a 7amp rated extension cord, into a 20A outlet, plugging in two space heater on max and a third one on low, and pull 18-19 amps through a cord rated for 7, and no fuse or breaker is going to stop you from doing that. So quite demonstratably, at minimum one part of the rest of the world very much does NOT safely use unfused plugs.

Every argument you make that requires fuses supports my contention. And no, it doesn’t. Swapping one safety features (central breakers) for a second, objectively better feature (fused plugs) isn’t invalidated by some ridiculous kindergarden bullshit of “oh but if you didn’t have those fuses it would be bad”

The code HAS those fuses, and with those fuses it is safe. Safer than a central breaker system in fact. You can’t just keep racking caveats changes and asterisks onto the UK electrical code and then laughing at how unsafe is. Every single arguement you make where you need to exclude/ignore safety features that the UK system has, is in fact an argument in favour of the system.

You’re assuming the internal resistance of a wire of sufficient gauge. An undersized wire - such as a power cord intended to be used on a 16A EU appliance - may not be capable of drawing 30A, let alone 1000, without catching fire. It may only draw 28A while it is glowing red hot. That same unfused power cable is perfectly acceptable and perfectly safe on a 16A EU circuit, but is unsafe on a UK household circuit without that special UK plug.

A power cord intended for a 16A EU appliance would be illegal to sell in the UK without an 15A fuse in the plug. Problem solved.

Again, you can’t argue the system is less safe when you keep needing to ignore safety devices to make that argument. I could just as well as say that without your indivisible branch breakers, the Japanese system is unsafe, and the UK manages to work perfectly safely without individual branch breakers. According to you, this is valid logic to demonstrate the Japanese system is worse than the UK system, and every time you mention branch circuits or branch breakers it just strengthens my point.

You’re ignoring the original point and arguing something tangential and irrelevant. The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs. Which means that their power cables are simpler in design and construction, but necessitates that their power cable must be able to survive the full rated household current. The UK does not use this “unfused plug” design philosophy. The reason they don’t use it is because it would necessitate that their power cables be capable of surviving 30A faults, rather than the 16A in the EU.

The UK does not restrict their household supply circuits to 16A. They allow their household circuits to carry 30A. That standardization decision necessitates the fused plug that the rest of the world simply doesn’t need

I can just as easily flip that argument, about the UK safely using ring circuits with plug fuses, whilst the rest of the world needs to use branch breakers to keep their branches limited in size.

You’re literally just talking about the fact that the unique system in the UK requires unique safety features. That is itself value neutral, and adds nothing of relevance.

Not an accurate observation of my understanding at all, and not particularly relevant to the discussion. The topic of discussion is the relationship of plugs to household wiring.

Considering you were arguing that Japanese plugs need to handle LOWER current, when in reality it’s the exact opposite, they have to handle HIGHER current, I’d say it’s an accurate observation. The most common standardised all purpose plug in the UK is fused at, and rated for 13 Amps. Well below a 20Amp. Japanese circuit.

Conceded, with the caveat that the RCD/AFCI/GFCI device for the 20A circuit will be more sensitive and allow lower current to pass than the equivalent RCD/AFCI/GFCI device on the 100A circuit.

Your caveat is wrong. The baseline leakage current is affected predominantly by voltage and cable length. A 20 Amp circuit and a 100A circuit could both perfectly adequately and safely be protected by a 30mA RCD.

Conceded, and irrelevant to the issue at hand

Relevant to the issue at the time, which was you claiming the outcome of electric shock changes based purely on the amperage rating of the cable used.

I suspect that those cables actually do have a fuse in them, much like the fused plugs used on North American Christmas decorations.

So the entire core of your argument, other countries not needing fuses in cables/plugs has just gone poof then.

Yes, exactly. Which is why the unfused portions of that device have to be designed to handle at least 16A.

I’d like to a citation for the claim that appliances need to be withstand the Maximum current in a fault case. Also what “withstands” is even supposed to mean in this context.

But In my opinion, even if that’s the case, that’s a point in FAVOUR of UK plugs. You can receive literally the IDENTICAL level of safety by making the appliance 3A fault tolerant, and giving the plug a 3Amp fuse.

Isn’t the ability to make every device individually fault taulerant so much better than needing make them all fault tolerant to the max current.

It’s also far safer abroad, because you’re literally taken the fuse in the device with you. According to you, what happens when a device designed for a 16 Amp EU socket is plugged via adapter into a 20A Japanese socket. Now suddenly it has inadequate fault protection. Do the same thing with a UK socket, and it maintains the exact same level of fault tolerance it’s always had.

Agreed. I’ve repeatedly made that exact argument in support of my point.

So if you agree with all my points then what exactly is your issue with the UK ekectric code ?

It seems to me that your entire grape is based around the fact that the same safety features are achieved differently in the UK, and you never argue about those safety features being worse, you simply point out that they are necessary, and somehow that makes the system worse. Also, small current fuses are arguably safer than circuit breakers. You can’t detect a defective breaker, until it fails to actuate at excess current. A defective fuse would just be broken, and not allow a circuit to form in the first place.

I did notably just say that the plug is the best in the world for electrical safety. I’ve made no claims of it’s usefulness or convenience outside of that.

(( am also unaware of any country on the planet that uses the same plug/connector for general purpose household devices and 3 phase power. The number you provided, SN441011, also just leads to relatively generic household plug that doesn’t seem fit suited for multi phase use either, so not sure what you’re trying to say. I’ve also rarely seen places outside of industrial environments that have multiphase outlets, except in America, which has split phase power, and uses the voltage boost by going phase to phase instead of phase to ground. There’ll you’ll do often find 240V split phase outlets for high power appliances like shop heaters, electric clothes driers or EVSE, but those outlets also require unique receptacles and plugs))

E: I believe I misunderstood exactly what you meant. You’re complaining that UK electric code has nonstandard for a high power plug+socket combination. For one, that though has nothing at all to do with this plug. A lack of standard for a completely different plug has nothing to do with the quality of the plug at hand.

Also, there actually IS a standard, that is specifically adopted for EVSE in the UK. You can have a dedicated 400V three phase 32A circuit installed in your garage, and terminate in a red IEC 60309.

It’s not that the standard doesn’t exist, it’s just the UK has a very very heavy preference for simply hard wiring high power and multiphase appliances.

To say nothing of how comically giant every appliance plug needs to be, regardless of how low its wattage is?

It’s a minor nuisance yeah sure, but it also has the nice advantage that there’s no need to fully mould plastic around it. UK plugs are pretty much universally openable, meaning you can repair them yourself if a fuse dies, or one of the wires comes lose. It’s also really easy, and literally all you need is a single screw driver, to swap a working plug over onto a cable who’s plug has broken.

But even so, it’s again not a safety issue so not exactly relevant to my poing.

The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite “higher than any other country”

Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That’s quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.

And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it’s safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it’s at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands…

The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There’s exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.

Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I’ve rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.

That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.

And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.

And even if it weren’t a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it’s in the wall or in the plug, as long as it’s there and does it’s job both would be equally safe.

The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don’t need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current) and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.

No it isn’t. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren’t, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they’re so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.

Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That’s why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).

For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.

No it isn’t. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you’re replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi.

Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You’re gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it’s fused at like 40 MILLI amps.

ANY cable being driven above it’s rated load is a fire hazard. There are healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it’s fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid.

And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it’s max rated load.

Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it’s drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I’ve pointed outñ

And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.

I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write

Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself

So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven’t already explicitly addressed this anyway ?

Here’s a list of prior arguments I’ve made, that you fully ignored. Until.you give me s good faith really to THE ENTIRETY of each argument,. I’m ignoring you.

The internal resistance of drastically undersized wiring may not be capable of passing sufficient current to overload the household breaker

Yeah. If you undersized a en entire houses ring circuit at AWG24, then indeed a 30A fuse wouldn’t be tripped. Though on the plus side, to even achieve it you would need to undersize the wire to such a massive degree that the wire itself just becomes a fuse.

In a our real world overhere, of fucking course a ring circuit can pass enough current to trip it’s breaker, and it’s fucking laughable to claim they can’t.

Here again, you’re demonstrating my exact point, despite claiming that what I am saying is “completely untrue”: The rest of the world builds its appliances to tolerate at least that 16A fault. For the UK to use that exact same manner of protection, they would need to build their appliances to tolerate a 30A fault. The same appliance would need a much heavier power cord in the UK than in the EU.

No they don’t. They can actually use much smaller power cords. Because there’s a fuse in the plug itself. If the plug itself has 1A fuse, then no matter what happens, the maximum amount of current the device can ever consume is 1A, so 1A is the highest fault current that device will ever have to handle. The UK system actually makes fault protection on the device side much better and easiest.

I covered that. Different rating. That 15A cord will survive a 20A fault. Its rated at 15A because the voltage drop will be out of spec at 20A draw, not because it will be a fire hazard at 20A. You will be able to get enough current through that 15A cord to trip the 20A breaker. You might not be able to get 20A through a 5A cord before the cord catches fire.

ANY cable being driven above it’s rated load is a fire hazard. There healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it’s fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid. And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it’s max rated load.

My point is that UK appliances are specifically not designed to trip UK breakers in a fault. US devices are.

In every jurisdiction where fuses are not required in plugs, appliance standards require the appliance to be able to trip the household breaker. This is a fundamental concept of electrical safety.

Nope, again completely untrue. Breakers are only required to trip if the circuit becomes overloaded.

Your breakers don’t, and can’t give a shit about what’s happening on the other side of the outlet.

Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it’s drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I’ve pointed out, repeatedly already, and you have repeatedly ignored, breakers are solely and exclusively for protecting the wire from overheating /overloading.

And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.

That’s actually false. You’re conflating the resistance of “skin” with the resistance if the “body”. Once you burn away that skin, your internal resistance drops substantially.

I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write

Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself

So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven’t already explicitly addressed this anyway ?

At this point I think calling this behaviour accidental would be an insult to your intelligence, and just have assume that you know exactly what you’re doing, and are knowingly and deliberately arguing in bad faith and with intellectually dishonesty, so stop. Just go away. I’m done. You’re either fully incapable of, or unwilling too, engage in honest debate, so I’m not linger interested in continuing this.

And how exactly doe the same exact thing not ally to a branch Circuit suffering a break?

Stick your finger in a 20A outlet, and you’ll pull out a burned finger. Stick your finger in a 100A outlet, and you’ll lose your hand, or your life. More power will pass through you before the circuit can be interrupted

Did you just deliberately ignore everything I wrote ? Both 20 and 100amps are several hundred times more current than it needs takes to kill you. And the resistance of your body is way to high to pass more than a few hundred milliamps anyway.

For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.

Our appliance wiring is rated to carry 20A from the receptacle throughout the appliance, or to a secondary current limiter within the appliance. Since the wiring is rated to the 20A the circuit can provide, we don’t need the secondary fuse in the plug. This is part of our appliance wiring standards.

No it isn’t. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you’re replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi. Are you deliberately ignoring half of what I wrote ?

Obviously. That has been part of my point the entire time: You use fewer, higher wattage circuits. UK circuits carries more power to pass through your body than a comparable circuit elsewhere in the world. The household wiring standards in the rest of the world are more restrictive than they are in the UK. You are repeating the exact points that I (and others) have been making from the start.

Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You’re gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it’s fused at like 40 MILLI amps.

UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps.

Man I fucking love how you literally just picked out the first line in a comment pointing out another one of the things you said that are objectively untrue (a dead short not blowing a UK ring fuse) and ignore everything else in the comment. You must have seen the comment to quote part of it, and yet you ignore it entirely. You’re clearly and demonstrably not arguing in good faith.

Reread my comments from the start

That’s fucking rich, when I’ve literally explicitly addressed every single point you made, whilst you seemingly deliberately ignore half the ones I make. Literally repeating falsehoods I disproved in the comment you’re replying to, whilst you’re replying.

Breakers on UK household circuits are designed to allow considerably more power than comparable breakers around the world.

That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.

To protect humans from electric shock we use residual current devices, which trip at 10’s of Milli amps. And here’s actually an advantage of a ring circuit. It forces you to place RCD protection on every single outlet in the building, instead of skimping on costs by just putting it on the branches that legally require one, like bathrooms and kitchens.

Those fuses are not needed in Japanese (or North American, or most other) plugs. We don’t need to protect the “external wiring” separately from the household wiring: the household circuit breaker is rated lower than the “external wiring”. Drawing a direct short on the “external wiring” in a UK circuit is not sufficient to trip the UK circuit breaker in the UK distribution panel; they need a secondary current limiter (a fuse) to provide that function.

That’s just demonstrably untrue. An individual branch of a household circuits in both the US or Japan can easily be fused at 20A (fun fact: European branch circuis, because of the higher voltage that you were raging against in your first comment, can handle more electric load whilst having SMALLER 16A breakers). In both Japan and America you can buy extension cords rated for 10 or 15A. So no. You just told a straight up, unequivocal lie there. And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.

And even if it weren’t a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it’s in the wall or in the plug, as long as it’s there and does it’s job both would be equally safe.

The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don’t need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current) and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.

No it isn’t. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren’t, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they’re so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.

Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That’s why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).

And don’t think I didn’t notice you just quietly avoided responding to any of my arguments pointing out the obvious falsehoods in your voltage claim.

Frankly, at this point, all you’ve done is utterly convince me that you are totally and utterly unqualified to speak on this topic. Almost every claim you make is wrong. And not even just “slightly oversimplified/technically incorrect” wrong, just straight up demonstrably untrue.

The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite “higher than any other country”

Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That’s quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.

And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it’s safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it’s at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands.

Again, the amount of current passed depends only on the voltage, which again, is the same in the UK as all of mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world except America and Japan), and has been since the early 20th century, so I’ve no idea what you’re trying to go on about there.

And lastly, no it isn’t. For one, the child safety shutters on all UK outlets are certainly not contained in a Japanese breaker panel. Neither are the fuses in the plug, which protect the external wiring. And nor is the insulation on the lower legs of the contacts contained in a breaker panel. The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There’s exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.

Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I’ve rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.

It’s possible to that of course, but I doubt it’s worth it. It also couldn’t be adapted as is, because fuses in each plug are always required t for UK plugs, they aren’t for EU plugs. And if you have to adapt a narrow EU plug to hold a replacable fuse would eat into size savings, require adapting the standard and require entirely new production lines for the modified plugs, so almost certainly simply not worth it.

Spamming this on inappropriate communities is just going to make me NOT watch your videos out of spite, if nothing else.

No, because the rest of the world isn’t America.

Those ring circuits WERE up to UK standard, and perfectly safe when they were constructed, and nowadays are either still covered by the standard, or grandfathered in, meaning at minimum in existing buildings, they still in fact are up to UK standard.

The reason other counties don’t use ring circuits isn’t because they’re less safe or inherently worse in any way, which the term “substandard” clearly implies. It’s because they’re less convenient. It’s easier and more convenient to make and use, and easier in terms of individual steps, to make safe seperate fused circuits instead of a ring circuit.

The reason the UK used ring circuits was because they use much less copper conduit, and given the massive copper everything shortage in the UK during and after WWII, the convenience of modern circuits simply wasn’t worth it.

No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring and electric code imporovments, but the features are objectively there, and they objectively make the plugs safer.

And the design of these features wasn’t because of “substandard” wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central breaker boards with breakers for each room, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn’t make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.

Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don’t give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse protecting a 16A circuit will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps through a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself. This is particularly useful for extension cords. Other countries without fused plugs need to either just flat out mandate ALL extension and multiplug cords be capable of safely handling the maximum current of a household circuit (e.g. Germany) OR just ignore that rather major safety hazard entirely and just kinda hope that nothing bad happens (e.g. USA) (if you’ve ever wondered, that’s specifically why chaining extension cords together in the US is considered dangerous)

Jup, that’s a really good feature. You can get aftermarket child shutters for EU style plugs as well, but they require you to twist the plug before inserting, making them kinda inconvenient, and they have to be specifically installed by parents. Though I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world. After all, we don’t make any of our other products or home designs toddler safe by default. It’s generally regarded as the parents responsibility to ensure their home is child proof before they get a child.

But the UK version of just having it in every outlet as a hidden feature that you wouldn’t even notice if you don’t know it’s there is definitely the best approach.

(Though it does make low form factor UK plugs almost impossible, because every plug must have a ground prong, even if there’s no actual safety need to have one)

A GFCI is the same thing as an RCD, they’re just different terms. They both have the same function: detecting leakage current, and isolating the electrical connection as soon as it does.

They are referencing the lack of isolation on the prongs for US plugs. If a US plug isn’t fully inserted, it’s possible for both of the two prongs to form electrical connections with the outlet, whilst not yet being fully inserted.

This means a small part of the prongs which are now at 110V potential to each other is exposed, and could potentially be touched by a child, or cause a short circuit if an object gets into the gap.

So yeah, the electrical code in the US for household plugs is just straight unsafe.

You can see the way to do it properly in this post: Notice how the two L+N prongs only have exposed metal at the very tip, this, if they’re inserted deep enough to create contact, it’s not possible for any exposed metal to still protrude from the outlet.

Having switched outlets wouldn’t make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don’t really add significantly to safety, they’re mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it’s powered or not. You can’t rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

And not allowing them kinda sucks for people who want to talk about smaller, less popular games (or niche topics/interests in general), because any posts on an overarching all-games-including community about a small niche indy game is almost certainly just going to get swallowed amongst the flood of posts about other games, and even if there’s people in that community who would’ve engaged with the post, most of them are likely to miss any given post, because they only make up such a tiny fraction of the total members.

For example, I love discussing the Eragon book series, but there’s no Eragon dedicated community on Lemmy (at least I didn’t find one), and I don’t really want posts about every other fantasy work ever in my feed, so I don’t really want to subscribe to overarching fantasy book communities.

And sure, if I explicitly feel the urge to talk about it, I can browse a big sub and filter for Eragon content (though the fact that niche topics posts on big communities are likely to get low engagement probably also discourages people from regularly posting about it in the first place, so there’d be fewer posts to even find), but this still robs me of the ability to see Eragon Posts Show up in my feed when I’m not explicitly looking for them.

Fun fact, Spam, as in spiced ham, is actually the origin of the name email spam. There’s a monty python sketch where the name Spam keeps getting incessantly repeated, and based on that sketch the term spam for unsolicited digital messages was coined.