Dollar value on human life 

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness/

Ok Richard, we all have a 13A socket with RCD protection. Extra cost zero. Charging point (OK it may be quicker but I could install another larger socket and the bit of electronics to charge quicker for a few quid) I will stick to £500 extra cost. Type Bs and lost neutral detection and a rod and install and everything costs at least that much at present. We are spending a Billion pounds a year (30 years life) no discount rate, so nearer 2 Billion in accounting terms, per life saved. Now explain the logic for this, as I asked, it is not a few extra quid, it is a huge sum much better spent on other things (perhaps even the NHS) where it would make a much bigger difference to lives saved or extended. Cost benefit is never used in safety discussions, so alleged "safety" is never costed.


Do not get the idea I am against safe working, or reasonable precautions because that is the opposite of my view. The electricity industry do live working all the time and it is more than adequately "safe". There is the odd incident but rarely any deaths to jointers, who are obviously well trained. The saving to everyone in money terms is huge, because cutting off areas from electricity has many downsides, while work is carried out. The same goes for some overhead line repairs where shutoffs tend to be even larger. Now consider the adequate word, how do you assess that? Clearly one has to decide that some accidents are acceptable, at a low level. Realistically it is never zero, as there is no way to do this except by locking everyone up, which also has a risk level (actually quite high). We should do the same with car charging. Every other country accepts a slight risk level, it appears that ours does not. Why not, that is the question we need to answer?

An interesting idea Chris, but one which would immediately become a political nightmare with many vested interests in making it mandatory and expensive. It is true that surgery may not always be the optimum solution for minor ailments, and death rates from dentistry are not zero for example. However decayed or broken teeth are both common and horrible, so we have widespread dentistry. In this case however the risk I have suggested, perhaps one death per year, and tens of millions of cars charged say 25 times a year on average, is an accident rate of 1 in 250 million. You are many times more likely to be killed outside your own gate by a road vehicle. A sense of proportion is necessary in all assessment of risk, the entire world in the UK thinks that risk assessments are the way to go, but when I do that the result is very safe yet we have section 722 and a COP, both of which are extremely cautious and suggest the risk is high (at least high enough to take a lot of measures and cost to remove; actually not remove but reduce by some small unknown amount). The risk of this accident is probably at a level of one thousandth of riding a bicycle on the road or perhaps even less. OK ban bicycles, they are far too dangerous to use, just imagine the pushback from that! The more this is discussed, the more it seems that the situation needs no special measures. I wonder how long it will take for someone to admit this and admit this is a non-problem? It is probably as likely as "someone" admitting that bicycles are a problem yet all drivers know this from direct experience!