3 ms·
There is actually a weird way to work around that. If you stand on an insulated sheet (like a clean plastic cutting board) you wouldn't have a path to ground. I
by sidewndr46 4y ago
There is actually a weird way to work around that. If you stand on an insulated sheet (like a clean plastic cutting board) you wouldn't have a path to ground. If you cut open one current carrying conductor of the cord and put yourself in-series a GFCI wouldn't trip in that case. Current would still flow through the device. Enough to hurt you, but probably not enough to turn it on for most devices like a lamp.
As you can guess, such an accident is nearly impossible even in the case of someone cutting through a cord accidentally.
- bombcar 4y agoSimilarly arc fault detectors try to detect arc faults which a GFCI won’t “see”.
- mannykannot 4y agoIndeed - and an electric chair will kill even if it is both properly grounded and plugged into a GFCI socket capable of handling the current (aside: do electric chairs have UL certification? I doubt it, but the states in which it is still nominally an option presumably want the operators to be safe.) If you are put / put yourself into the normal current path (such as while working on the innards of plugged-in and switched-on equipment), you are just the load (or part of it), and neither GFCI nor previous protection schemes will help you.