3 ms·

> Homes have electricity. It can easily kill you if you're careless Unless you're playing on the input side of the meter-box, it's extremely unlikely you'll be

• geerlingguy 8y ago
  Open up your circuit breaker box and touch the bus bar... or touch a live 30A circuit, and I think you'd disprove that one. Not saying I agree or disagree with the line of reasoning here, but there is plenty of current even in a North American 2-phase house's wiring to kill someone pretty quickly, no matter how well grounded the system is.
  • korethr 8y ago
    Small nitpick. North-American domestic power isn't 2-phase. It's 1 phase, center-tapped.
• pwg 8y ago
  Those "mandated-by-law earth leakage device[s]" are only mandated for those circuits where you might most easily electrocute yourself, locations where water is present (bathrooms and kitchens), in basements with concrete floors, and exterior receptacles. The rest of the circuits are not mandated to have GFCI (the correct acronym for those "earth leakage device[s]") interrupters, and so those circuits /could/ kill you if you were not careful. Yes, it becomes marginally more difficult without easy access to water or a concrete floor, but is still quite possible.
  • grecy 8y ago
    In Australia they're law for the entire house, have been for decades.
    • pwg 8y ago
      Ah, then Australia is one up on the USA in that respect, where they are only required for the areas I listed, and even then the requirement is only for new construction or renovations.
      • linuxftw 8y ago
        Of course, we're talking in the context of performing repairs on a dangerous thing (Tesla), so if someone is doing their own renovations or repair, it doesn't matter what safety features are present as they might be defeated by the homeowner. Somehow, however, we manage just fine.