4 ms·

>I think it's a much bigger assumption... i don't think it's that big of an assumption. there's a long history of discrimination being enforced through buildi

>I think it's a much bigger assumption... i don't think it's that big of an assumption. there's a long history of discrimination being enforced through building codes. will a second stairwell save a life at some point? almost certainly yes, but it wouldn't be an effective blocker if it obviously didn't. the question isn't whether it improves safety, it's whether it improves safety enough to be worthwhile. a second stairwell would also almost certainly save a life if it were required for single-family homes too, but we don't do that because there's some line somewhere where we decide making things 100% safe is silly, and compromise the edge case of safety for the sake of practicality. and there's a lot of forces trying to move that line away from practicality when it comes to multi-family housing.

autoexec 3y ago
The difference is that for a single family home people have other ways to get out alive. Someone could easily survive a drop out of a second story window and ropes (or today ladders like this one https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kidde-Fire-Escape-Ladder-2-Story-13-ft-Long-1-000-lb-Load-Capacity-21030942/100541080 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kidde-Fire-Escape-Ladder-2-Story...) make single family homes with only one stairwell pretty safe. That doesn't work when you're got people trapped in a six-story tenement. International Building Code requires the second stairway only for buildings higher than three stories which seems like a good idea considering that the median height leading to death is about 4 to 5 storeys. (https://thetraumapro.com/2010/01/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-falls-from-a-height/ https://thetraumapro.com/2010/01/11/what-you-need-to-know-ab...)