Lets also not forget the people that rent. As a renter I cannot make changes to the house without approval from the landlord. I can, however, replace the smoke detector and leave the one that came with the house in a drawer until I move out.

The statement "A smoke alarm in or near the kitchen is incorrectly placed if it is producing frequent false alarms" may very well be true but it doesn't matter. People have and will continue to disable their smoke/CO detectors if they are annoying. The ability to simply wave at the detector to get it to shut off (Like after burning your toast) means that people will simply wave to shut off the alarm instead of disabling it.

Even with what I know about fire death statistics, best practices, and what not I have disabled fire detectors before for any/all of the following reasons:

* Low battery alarm

* Going off at just a whiff of smoke

* Randomly making noises even after replacing the battery

Now you can say that it was incredibly stupid of me to disable them, and it probably was, but that doesn't change the fact that people's first instinct is just to disable it.