The UK plug causes far less injuries than any other plug due to its incredible safety design.
If you insert it wrongly in certain power strips, you can directly insert metal objects. And many manufacturers implement british plugs incorrectly, with full-metal prongs, leading to possible electrocution risks.
The Schuko plug is much safer in such situations — even if the manufacturer fucks up as much as they can, it still will ensure it’s impossible to touch the prongs as soon as they’re inserted.
The reason why F and E have similar safety but don't require fuse as UK plugs have is the use of ring circuits in the UK.
I don't know that they're exactly as safe as UK plugs, though they're not far: all three designs ensure the plug is earthed before the "power" pins make contact, but historically UK plugs require an earth pin to be inserted before opening the "power" pin shutters while in type E/F it's just the insertion of the power plugs which force the shutters open.
Type E/F plugs also use recessed sockets rather than insulated pin roots but that should not make a difference.
A recessed design means this isn't possible so is safer as this type of misspecification isn't possible.
If the UK plug isn't pushed all the way in the contacts aren't live. So, nope. The insulation is an extra safety measure on an already over-engineered plug.
That seems completely independent from the actual plug design. You can certainly get sockets with switches[0] it just isn't very popular (or, frankly, useful).
> and don't have the same shutter-safe design.
What you're saying is a bit unclear, do you mean the part where UK plugs need some sort of earth inserted to open "power" shutters or do you mean having shutters at all? Because the latter is definitely the case, and as an other commenter notes there are widely available plugs which can be inserted "inverted" and open the powered shutters with little efforts. While the E/F design is "less safe" in the best case scenario it's also less conducive to easy misuse.