They should issue warnings, apparently.
The death of Richard Bull, 32, which occurred when the iPhone fell into the water, was accidental, the coroner ruled. Dr Sean Cummings said he would also send a report to the phone’s manufacturer, Apple, to warn about the dangers.
“These seem like innocuous devices, but they can be as dangerous as a hairdryer in a bathroom. They should attach warnings,” he told the inquest. “This was a tragic accident and I have no reason to believe at all that there anything other than it being completely accidental.”
One wonders what sort of warning should apply – not to be used by idiots, perhaps?
Bull’s mother, Carole, said: “I have worried that so many people and especially teenagers, that can’t be separated from their phones, don’t know how dangerous it is.”
Electricity and water?
His brother Andrew said: “When you are younger you are taught about electricity and the bath, but you don’t think about this. I still find it hard to believe that between the charger plug and the phone would be enough electricity to kill someone.”
You are taught about it so that you will think about it. That’s the point. Still, survival of the fittest and all that. In this case an example of the stupid gene has been removed from the pool.
That Darwin chappie had it all sussed.
There was a similar tale earlier in the week where a baby was “killed by phone charger”. No, it wasn’t, the poor wee bugger was killed when it picked up a frayed charger cable which hadn’t been binned. It’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault.
The common hard-hearted pseudo-Darwin argument is flawed. So many of the people in stories like this have already bred, or are well into the age to do so.
According to a link from the BBC website to the Sun, the deceased had run a mains extension lead from a socket outside the bathroom. The reel was on his chest, and the charger was plugged in there.
There was a phone and a charger involved, but the current probably came direct from the National Grid, not via anything made by Apple. If the charger plug is wet, the isolation to the mains will break down, which is still not Apples fault.
Perhaps there should be a Coroners verdict of “Suicide by idiocy”
That is an interesting detail. To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected the low voltage output from a phone charger to be particularly dangerous. Why would he have put the reel on his chest? why not put the reel somewhere else and run the low voltage lead to the phone from there? Industrial strength idiocy.
Obvious, innit? The phone’s charger cord wasn’t long enough to span the distance between the extension reel on the bathroom floor and the phone on the bather’s chest. Thus, by law, charger cords should be at least 3-foot long. (And don’t you dare muddy the waters by saying an extension reel on the bathroom floor would be subject to splashes from the bath. That’s for the next coroner’s report.)
Regarding the matter of things having warnings stamped on them. On the Darwin Awards website there was a tale about a girl who had died after deliberately sniffing an aerosol can of insecticide. Below the line on the link to the story, people were seriously suggesting that the can needed better warnings on it. The warnings that these people deemed inadequate were a skull and crossbones sign with the word “POISON” written in red in that font that looks like a stencil beneath. So even if the extension reel had featured a red sticker saying “Not suitable for use as a bath toy” I doubt that it would have made a difference.
This wasn’t an accident, it was ‘death by misadventure’. The ‘authorities’ and housebuilder had done their job by not fitting a power socket in the bathroom. The deceased had deliberately set out to bypass that protection.
Similarly anyone who climbs over a fence onto a railway and then gets hit by a train doesn’t get killed ‘accidently’.
Nah, it’s death by idiocy. I mean how effing stunned do you have to be to pull a stunt like that?