I'm often surprised when posters identify themselves as "European" which encompasses such a broad range of cultures, biotypes, and ecosystems that it makes any comparison of the US way vs the European way virtually impossible.

That said, when looking at the reasons for fire safety in the U.S., there are many factors to consider which may or may not apply in parts of Europe

-- Frequency of wildfires. They are not uncommon in my southwest corner, so fire safety is taken very seriously

-- Proximity of emergency services. It can't be assumed that the local fire department is a few minutes drive away

-- Building materials. Materials that are fire-proof are rarely earthquake proof.

Any of these may or may not apply in any particular case but "embafflement" seems pretty extreme.

> I'm often surprised when posters identify themselves as "European" which encompasses such a broad range of cultures, biotypes, and ecosystems that it makes any comparison of the US way vs the European way virtually impossible.

Many people in Europe do indeed identify as European. This has become more and more prevalent as people increasingly move around in Europe. I'd also argue that you are ignoring the cultural differences in the US (e.g. New Jersey vs Utah) something which I find Europeans are often guilty of.

> That said, when looking at the reasons for fire safety in the U.S., there are many factors to consider which may or may not apply in parts of Europe

> -- Frequency of wildfires. They are not uncommon in my southwest corner, so fire safety is taken very seriously

We are talking about multi (>4) story, multi family apartment buildings, how are wildfires relevant?

> -- Proximity of emergency services. It can't be assumed that the local fire department is a few minutes drive away

Again we are not talking about requirements for some cottage in the woods, these are city buildings. The whole argument is for buildings where you have space constraints.

> -- Building materials. Materials that are fire-proof are rarely earthquake proof.

Again I don't see the relevance, we are talking about a national building code, but only a tiny fraction of US cities are earthquake zones. The article also asserts that most Asian countries (which presumably includes Japan) have only one stairwell requirements.

> Any of these may or may not apply in any particular case but "embafflement" seems pretty extreme.

I actually agree if one needs to grasp for straws like these for reasons for the 2 stairwell rule, it is pretty baffling. The article actually nicely described the history and why it's outdated.

> Many people in Europe do indeed identify as European

I'll admit my surprise. US has a lot of variety, still I'd have expected that residents of Anchorage and Manhattan have more more in common than residents of Iceland and Malta.

> We are talking about multi (>4) story, multi family apartment buildings, how are wildfires relevant?

> Again we are not talking about requirements for some cottage in the woods, these are city buildings. The whole argument is for buildings where you have space constraints.

> Again I don't see the relevance, we are talking about a national building code, but only a tiny fraction of US cities are earthquake zones. The article also asserts that most Asian countries (which presumably includes Japan) have only one stairwell requirements.

I think you are underestimating the population densities of US cities. I live in a major city and wildfires have burned homes a few miles from me. Residential areas are vast and fire departments are few. I'm also not sure how you can say few US cities are in earthquake zones - maybe if you squint at the numbers, but most if not all of the west coast, Alaska, and Hawaii are in earthquake zones. That's a pretty large chunk to hand-wave away.

Multifamily are almost never built in fire-prone areas, especially on the west coast.

Regarding identifying as European, this is often in relation to something, and one can identify one selves as many things.

I identify myself as an inhabitant of my city compared to someone from a neighbour city. I identify as European compared to someone from United States. I identify myself as a westerner compared to people with a completely different culture.

Excellent point. I would also concede to the previous commenter, that citizens of different countries in Europe have (in many aspects) larger cultural differences than citizens of different states in the US (and language is a huge factor), but there are still many commonalities as well.

Of course, as you allude, the US is a large and diverse country too, where those features may or may not apply in a given locality.

I suspect, though, that on both continents, when we’re talking about these problems with the dual staircase requirement in this context, we’re talking mainly about relatively high-density developments in space-constrained urban settings.

If, as the article claims, we’ve arrived at comparable fire fatality rates under the two policy regimes, it does seem like their prevailing standards neatly capture a tradeoff: it seems like you can add safety either by socializing a fire response infrastructure capable of quicker response, or you can privatize that extra margin of safety by imposing these second staircase costs on individual developments. I’d be curious how the total costs add up, I’m almost inclined to donate to the guy’s nonprofit just to get the answer to that.

I’d be curious how these changes would affect the economics of apartment blocks on huge greenfield suburban tracts, where parking requirements rather than staircase requirements seem to be the limiting factor space-wise. I’m thinking of the kind where space is cheap enough that they do surface lots rather than building parking decks into the structure. It seems like they tack exterior staircases on the edges of the building at not too much extra cost in those situations, but I suppose the floor plan implications must still come to bear.

The point was that Europe has all of these but no double staircases.

Don’t want to comment on missing emergency services in densely built areas but hope it isn’t the case it’s so bad you need an extra flight of stairs.

> -- Frequency of wildfires. They are not uncommon in my southwest corner, so fire safety is taken very seriously

There is finally progress on building codes for wildfire safety (called “WUI” codes).

It still has missing bits. For example, try to find a standard for a building air intake in an area subject to wildfires.

Because of the European Union there's a lot more of common standards and regulations concerning things like buildings between European Countries than there are between American States.

Also, a lot more stuff is codified by law or treaties instead of by business and trade associations.

So, on this matter, it makes a lot of sense of speaking about the European experience.

The US has some very interesting requirements when building. In some cities, regardless of destiny, new buildings are required to have 1.x parking spots per unit or something of the sort as well. Which basically assures all buildings have to be designed for car centric life.

It's the same for many European cities and towns. Many cities started to reduce it down to 0.5 parking spaces per flat or less, because many of those parking spaces tend to be empty in bigger cities. And just increase prices for housing.

I was just visiting a European friend for a couple weeks. They have a car but parking was a sufficient drama that they took the Uber equivalent within the city most of the time. Busses but minimal metro.

I honestly don't see the drama in most European cities, it's not like in NYC. Street parking is very limited in bigger cities, so you might need to park in expensive parking garages. Or use other methods of travel.

Only in areas with a lot of old houses (built before cars were a thing) there might be a lack of garages.

Owning/driving a car is generally very expensive in many European countries. Not like in the US where wages are rather high, but cars and gas extremely cheap, because there is no substantial tax on them.

Edit: this might not apply to southern Europe. In some southern European cities it's impossible to go by car. That's why everyone drives a scooter.

This was southern Europe. Looked like mostly street/sidewalk parking as far as I could tell. Certainly lots of cars--not a lot of scooters.

We’ve really done a number to cater to cars and the auto industry in the United States. Some More News does a great job on outlining the history of cars, roads, and what can be done to make things better - https://youtu.be/sayw3TOhykg

The requirement is because if you don't mandate a minimum amount of parking, developers won't create it. Then the neighbors of your fancy new building can no longer find parking near their own home because the new building tenants take it. So they justifiably get angry and start voting in politicians that will enforce minimum capacity for new development.

Your conclusion seems wrong in pratice. Seems in fact quite the opposite happens, more affordable housing, etc. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/...

So the neighbors who where there first also don't have any parking in their buildings? Only the new residents should be required to park thier cars off street? I fail to see how that is justifiable.

How do you think we feel about cookie notices?

Another European here: I think the law is fine. How companies, specially US companies react to it, that is not.

1. A ton of Health related websites in US refuse to work in Europe, because they are NOT willing to let you visit without sensitive data being grabbed with cookies. I truly do not understand how US people are ok with this.

2. The law says that you can't make hard to refuse cookies, yet many US-based sites I visit have shady, shady practices, for example many you have to click a button to see all the sliders for individual cookies, and when you click that button, it switches the orders of the buttons, so that the button you just clicked become "accept all", and the previous "accept all" button becomes "save current settings". Thus if you double click/tap by accident you accept all.

3. The sites that most often piss me off with shady cookie banner that tries its hardest to force you to opt-in to tracking, are ones that use a company called "Admiral", that according to LinkedIn is from Florida. https://www.linkedin.com/company/getadmiral/

> A ton of Health related websites in US refuse to work in Europe, because they are NOT willing to let you visit without sensitive data being grabbed with cookies.

That is the less charitable interpretation. In reality a lot of sites that cater primarily to a US audience don't have the willingness or development time to try and comply with European regulations. Barring European visitors neatly solves that.

The year is 3157. Each time you access a new resource on the shared data substrate, you are required to accept something called a "Cookie." You have no idea what they are or why. Your crewmates say it has something to do with the homeworld, but you just shrug and prepare for the hyperspace jump.

There is one solution for the cookie notices that is very seldomly talked about: just don't use any marketing cookies, then you don't need consent from the user :)

Yes, housing and web cookies, equally important for one's life.

That ain't us.... kind of. That's the websites deciding to follow the letter of the law (or a spiteful, capitalist interpretation, taking it right to the line) instead of the spirit of the law.

OK, unintended consequences of legislation. But those cookie banners are not mandated, exactly. They don't need to be there. It's the companies deciding to do it that way, so they can keep gobbling data.

It's like if the building companies implemented the 2nd staircase, but only so they could measure who is going up and down it. Not for saving lives.

If they were opt in, or unnecessary tracking wasn't implemented in the first place, then the banners could be elegant or gone.

But I do agree that the legislation (especially the ultra focus on cookies specifically) was... blinkered & short sighted.

No, that's entirely Europe. The outcome of the legislation was easy for anyone to see. As you say, it was blinkered and short-sighted. And I still have to click 20 popups away on mobile every day.

If only a few websites had the banner, then maybe I'd blame those websites. But when they virtually all do, I blame the law.

Actually the legislation is fine, much better than before. It's the enforcement that's lacking.

I'd say >90% of cookie banners break the law. It's just that enforcement is only slowly catching up. We have already seen a couple of cases and I expect that as soon as there have been more rulings banners will start to dissappear or become much simpler.

What basis do you have for saying they would disappear?

I've never heard anyone suggest that.

(And them becoming "simpler" is irrelevant. As far as unwanted interruptions go, a popup is a popup.)

Just out of interest, you prefer to have your data harvested and sold?

How about: Don't harvest and sell my data, and don't show me a bunch of popups about exactly what data you can collect on me?

That is of course the ideal, but what, you're just gonna trust them?

I don't trust a popup a single bit more than no popup.

So it's not like I trust anything either way. Get rid of the popups. Any solution needs to be legal and not involve popups.

don't use tracking cookies. so complicated!

Us Americans are very wide.

The second staircase is for the oversized pickup truck.

(And anyway the dual staircase thing isn’t even universal in the US).

Oddly, this is already a solved problem.

NYC fire escapes are world famous. If every sub-10 floor building can have a 2nd window fire escape.... then you can have your cake and eat it too.

NYC stopped building fire escapes a long time ago. There are still tons of them, but all on older buildings.

It certainly would be interesting to see them make a comeback though.

Why would you choose to write something here with a snarky attitude like that?

There's a reasoned discussion to be had around fire safety regulations, but when you instantly make it about cultures and don't even try to understand, you're not being part of the solution -- you're part of the problem.

Maybe I should say I’m from abroad instead? European seems to trigger something in some folks around here.

That aside, I fail to see any cultural or other reason to require twin staircases nowadays other than ‘that’s how we always did it here’. I admit it openly and state that I’m from somewhere where we don’t do that, and the world works just as well, except buildings have a higher useful to total area ratio.

> European seems to trigger something in some folks around here.

Nothing personal against you, but we see a fair number of self-described Europeans that are a lovely combination of naive, ignorant, and arrogant. It isn't fair to stereotype, but it takes ongoing effort not to.

> That aside, I fail to see any cultural or other reason

But are you an expert in it? Have you researched it? Are you sure the world would "work just as well" if the safety requirements were removed in the US? Considering things like different building materials, different rates of wildfires near urban areas, etc.?

Maybe instead of declaring yourself baffled as if it's obviously something dumb or backwards because it's not how you do it in Europe (or another place), you should ask why it's different instead, and see if you can learn rather than judge.

Then it wouldn't come across as condescending.

Embafflement? Oh US buildings have that too: fire-proof doors divide those long hallways that connect the staircases.

Most housing was wood framed and there was tragedy after tragedy from inescapable fires.

I'm baffled at the phrase "single stair" when what they actually mean is "single staircase". I had to read most of that article to work out what it actually meant, while at the same time imagining buildings with only one stair.

> I can't even put to words my embafflement

That's because the word is "bafflement."

American here.

I can't even put to words my embafflement upon learning that 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in Europe in 2017.

That had little to do with stairs, but it was caused by the use of inappropriate combustible materials, which were forbidden for buildings of that height in many countries of continental Europe, but they were allowed in Great Britain were regulations were much more lax.

So that event is strictly specific to UK and not representative for Europe in general.

We (UK) had banned those materials too until the tories decided to unban them because many of them are also property developers.

The materials were also forbidden in the UK, but the enforcement of the regulations was very poor.

(The materials are produced for use on 1-2 storey buildings, which is fine.)

That was due to missing stairs? And there is a difference between skyscrapers and 3-6 story multi-apartment buildings where in the worst case you can even exit fine with fire truck ladders or assisted jumps, but the article says even required for those, which would really feel ridiculous for those kind of buildings here. No need to be salty, we find each other alien on many levels :D

The cause is irrelevant, 72 people died in a building fire in 2017. That didn’t need to happen.

Didn't doubt that, but that tragedy was not the point of the "embafflement"-response to the "embafflement"-statement actually, what was my point, so pointless in total, same as you now calling that out again...

Fire deaths per 100k in 2019:

US .82

UK .38

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates

you understand that 1/3 of the country lights on fire annually?

Yes, our insanely burdensome health and safety regulations in the US often baffle the devil-may-care freewheeling folks over in Europe.

/s

It's even worse in Canada.

You need a 2nd staircase for a multi-unit home that's over 2 storeys. If it weren't for the "multi-unit" part, there would be a lot of houses that would need to be built with a 2nd stair.

Second staircases are pretty good. I think most people should have them if they can afford them.