Comment by chemotaxis
12 hours ago
> There's a reason for most regulations - most of them are written in blood.
Sure, but it's a balancing act, right?
My favorite example is that hairdryers sold in the US are required to have ground fault interrupters in the plug. This is touted as an important safety feature and it appears to prevent something like 2-4 deaths a year. Or at least, it used to when it first rolled out, because now you have GFCI outlets in the bathroom in any new or remodeled homes, so maybe it's redundant.
The hairdryers sold in the EU don't have that.
So yeah, it's a regulation written in blood, but it's a pretty good example of a gray area. Once you get into the business of preventing single-digit deaths, things get really weird. You probably should also ban pointy scissors (people trip), frankfurters (choking risk), only allow the sale of pre-peeled bananas, etc.
Most European electrical codes don't allow electrical outlets in the bathroom at all.
That's just not true. Electric toothbrushes, shavers, it's also not uncommon to have a washing machine in the bathroom.
Maybe the UK is doing something weird here, but bathroom outlets are very much common in the EU.
British standards are all BS. The electrical wiring one is BS7671. It divides the bathroom into zones: https://flameport.com/wiring_regulations/BS7671_selected_sub...
Zone 0 is inside the bathtub. Damn, so I can't put an outlet there? Zone 1 is over it, and zone 2 is 2 feet around it, and allows 12-volt outlets for small gadgets. Beyond that you can have ordinary outlets with the right circuit breakers (aka RCDs, GFCIs) integrated into them.