Which are only necessary because British houses are wired with a ring main. It’s a false economy.
Also, when it was created, most appliances were earthed. Nowadays, most things one plugs in are small electronic devices which don’t need an earth. Type G/BS1363 has no 2-pin variant, and even mandates a mechanical shutter to prevent a plug without an earth pin from being used. Which was great in 1947, but not so much now, when Europeans, Americans, Japanese, Australians and such have slender 2-pin plugs and economical sockets to put them in, while the Brits/Irish/HK/UAE are stuck with their enormous clownshoe of a plug.
I would have thought two pin plugs are easily to break. I’ve not broken a British plug in 40 years of life.
Anyway I’m not trying to debate this. There are plenty of resources online where electricians discuss the different plug types and the order is typically UK, Germany, and Australia.
What I’d like to see is apples-to-apples comparison of home and office safety between the different plug types. The data is sorta out there, but it’s not normalized in a way that’s convenient for comparison between countries.
On paper, yes, the North American plug is pretty bad, but will that show up in actual practice? There may be a case for changing it, but that needs a comprehensive study before going to all the effort to transition to a better design. Even if we had that study right in front of us, I can already hear conservatives complaining about Marxists electrical plugs.
Go watch any video comparing plugs and I bet the majority say Type G. It has so many safety features it’s unreal.
Which are only necessary because British houses are wired with a ring main. It’s a false economy.
Also, when it was created, most appliances were earthed. Nowadays, most things one plugs in are small electronic devices which don’t need an earth. Type G/BS1363 has no 2-pin variant, and even mandates a mechanical shutter to prevent a plug without an earth pin from being used. Which was great in 1947, but not so much now, when Europeans, Americans, Japanese, Australians and such have slender 2-pin plugs and economical sockets to put them in, while the Brits/Irish/HK/UAE are stuck with their enormous clownshoe of a plug.
I would have thought two pin plugs are easily to break. I’ve not broken a British plug in 40 years of life.
Anyway I’m not trying to debate this. There are plenty of resources online where electricians discuss the different plug types and the order is typically UK, Germany, and Australia.
What I’d like to see is apples-to-apples comparison of home and office safety between the different plug types. The data is sorta out there, but it’s not normalized in a way that’s convenient for comparison between countries.
On paper, yes, the North American plug is pretty bad, but will that show up in actual practice? There may be a case for changing it, but that needs a comprehensive study before going to all the effort to transition to a better design. Even if we had that study right in front of us, I can already hear conservatives complaining about Marxists electrical plugs.