Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Technology Connections"
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Some of our devices do, in fact, not have an actual off switch here in New Zealand. It's Really Annoying, because sometimes those same devices are also designed on the assumption that you'll never Want to turn them off, so do stupid things like revert to factory default settings when you do. (These are usually things made primarily for other markets, admittedly. Not always though)
Most have actual switches on the device as well though.
Broadly speaking, the wall switch on the power plugs (in most cases identical to the light switches, as I understand it) provide a whole bunch of minor improvements to safety (mostly not Electrical safety (though a little of that too) as such so much as safety from fire, tripping hazards, and 'i just stepped on a spikey thing!', especially for children, the elderly, etc.), convenience (particularly when mucking around with proper extension cords. No, not multi-boxes.), And reducing wear and tear (many less instances of plugging and unplugging, plus the rapid disconnect the same as in light switches).
Of course, our plugs aren't a Lot better than american ones. The plug housing Always flairs out to completely cover all three sockets even on two pin plugs and keep your hand away from the pins (well, some old ones didn't. They do now though!) the bit you grab to unplug it is a bit more solid (admittedly, it's often some sort of transformer/converter brick thing...) and the pins are Never long enough to stick out of the socket when plugged in properly, but that's pretty much it.
Standard safety measure is inserting plastic dummy-plugs (that are roughly equivalent to childproof lids on medicine bottles) into unused sockets, but no one bothers with that if there aren't small children in the house (not least because they have a Really Annoying (though perfectly safe and easy to fix) failure state where the mechanism to get them out breaks off...)
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@Novashadow115 to be fair, he'd actually be right about...well, most people. It just has nothing to do with EV vs ICE or much of anything else that might be thus implied.
Most people simply do not actually travel to other cities much. Usually due to lack of time, lack of money, or just lack of reason to do so. Perhaps they don't see other cities as other countries, really, but that's largely due to not really thinking about either very much... There's places within reasonable travel distance by whatever methods are available for just doing day to day things, places that are within day-trip distances for doing something a bit special on a weekend or other day off, and then there's everywhere else that requires a lot of planning ahead, packing, organization, etc. (degree of paperwork and language learning involved varies, but beyond that not much changes) That's really how most people think about that sort of thing. EV cars, ICE cars, various public transit options (of whatever type and quality happen to be available), they all nudge around which thing is in what category a bit (and just being flat out rich makes a big difference
Not to mention the fact that the USA is large enough that more distant states (and the cities there-in) pretty much Are different countries in most meaningful respects.
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@BlackHawkBallistic Ideally if you're going outside of EV range you'd be able to make use of various mass transit options... ... of course, some parts of the world are much better in that regard than others.
Also, last I heard smaller delivery trucks and vans could be battery powered quite happily.
Of course, you do hit range and mass limits after a while. EVs have their own version of the rocket equation to contend with. The ideal solution to this is, well, electrified rail in most cases, but there is a range and throughput band between 'last mile consumer and small retail delivery in cities' and 'roll several entire train cars right into the warehouse', and that does assume the rail infrastructure's still in place/gets built. (too bad so much got ripped up in the later half of the 20th century). For that, ICE vehicles are still the way to go...
Though there has been an interesting experiment/first stage infrastructure project in... Germany, I think it was? Basically takes its cues from trolley buses. Basically your standard big-rig trucks, except there's a pantograph on the cab roof and overhead cables along the outermost lane of the highway (some of these are hybrids that use ICE once they leave the highway, others have batteries for their last mile in cities, and I think some just run between depots that are just off the highways and served by the cables as well. Can't quite recall for that last one)
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Mobility scooters can also have reverse alarms of the beepy sort. Having one back up right next to you In A Shop is Awful. I imagine getting your foot run over by such a scooter would Also be awful, and they're not as loud as the ones on trucks, but still...
As for reverse lights, around here it has become Fairly standard in recent times for cars to have White lights on the rear that turn on when going backwards, in addition to the red... basically running lights that indicate you're looking at the back of a car (or other vehicle, based on their number and position) and get Noticeably brighter when the breaks are activated.
There's been a law/regulation on the books for longer than I've been alive that cars Can have white lights on the rear, so long as those lights only activate when going Backwards (and likewise, Can have red lights on the front... so long as they only activate when going backwards), but manufacturers didn't actually Bother until... honestly, I don't remember, but it was rare enough to be noteworthy if you saw it in the early 2000s, and these days cars that Don't have such lights are rare enough to be noteworthy.
There are also parking lights. From what I recall, those tend to be a sort of yellow-ish white, often postioned so they make the rear license plate Very obvious (by way of shining right on it from the sides and sort of using it as a reflector) and so you can see just enough around the rear of a car that you won't bash your shins on the tow bar (if your car has one). Might help a bit with getting things in and out of the back of the car or changing a rear tire, I guess?
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@Rickyp0123 if it's wired up the same way it is here (where it's very common to have a switch by the door and a switch by where the bed is expected to be in the master bedroom, or at each end of a passage way, or any other similar situation), the lights are On when both switches are in the same position and Off when they switches don't match. I've seen how the wiring for that works before, but I forget exactly.
And this bothered me enough that I went and looked it up:
First off, the circuit doesn't go power-switch-light-switch-power, as one might think, but power-switch-switch-light-power. Then it's really straight forward: The switches have their 'top' pins connected to each other, and their 'bottom' pins connected to each other. So when both are 'up', there's a complete circuit, when both are 'down', there's a complete circuit, and when one is in each position there is not.
The quote marks there are because it actually doesn't matter which way up the switches are. They can be sidewise, it doesn't change anything. Heck, you could have them up opposite ways (or, perhaps more accurately, wired 'backwards') and it wouldn't matter to the circuit (though, it would be a bit more confusing for the user, and potentially cause problems for anyone having to work on the thing again later).
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