I've heard of electricians who will change a live receptical. I even found this video exhibition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WERqtFfgcyo
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/c/vde--insulated-tools/
Despite being warned not to over and over again, I have replaced multiple electrical outlets and light switches in my home without flipping the breakers
I would much rather work on a hot 277V lighting fixture than a 120V wall socket. Much more room to work, wire gauge is way thinner. The downside is that you're always on a ladder, so a big shock is comes with a ten foot fall as a free bonus. If I'm touching anything inside a wall, the breaker is getting flipped.
The consequences at hand make working with even house-voltage electricity a "wicked learning environment" [1]. The first time you get things wrong may be lethal, without the opportunity to learn from experience.
Please consider turning the power off the next time you do electrical work. I don't know you, but I still care whether or not you get zapped :).
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experience-studio/20...
The egg safety standards in the US and EU come to mind. Each standard considers the other standard to be so unsafe it must be banned. But they're both fine.
What I haven't seen (and don't know why?) is a VDE screwdriver in the neon/LED voltage detection style.
Personally I even isolate lighting circuits to change a bulb. It almost certainly wouldn't be a problem if I didn't, but it's so easy, why not.
Those neon/LED drivers (non-(intended)-contact) are in basically every 'dad toolbox' and 'man drawer', a VDE 1000v rated one just seems appealing/like it'd sell well, even if sure, people who actually need that (or should be doing things that do) have better tools for it.
Hardly compares to the shock (pun intended) I got when I happened to touch the long-'tingly' light switch at the same time as another well-earthed one through the door though.
Knowing how to move around the wire will further reduce the probability, so you can indeed learn to improve your odds. But still, each shock carries that probability (and it's much higher than the things we consider common, like driving a car in a high-speed road). How many times are you ok with putting your life at risk?
One should better avoid working on live wires. If you can't avoid, there are gear and safety procedures that may save your life, uncomfortable as they are. There is no reason for getting shocked all the time.
That's not the right question to ask. If it was that black and white then you'd never get in a car.
Most people go on unimportant car trips just to save a few minutes or for a minor convenience, despite the risk.
It's not a huge benefit each time, but it's also not a huge risk each time. So don't round just one side to zero.
Also who said they aren't using protective gear like insulated tools? That sentence was talking about electricians after all.
Looks to me the OP's friend is just rounding the risk on his life to zero due to normalization of deviance alone and you are keen on defending it because "well, if a professional does it, there may be some good reason". Rest assured that plenty of professionals die because of the that kind of thing. (Normalization of deviance is the large cause of death on every dangerous profession, and mostly done by professionals.)
By the way, the safety gear for working on life wires is more than insulated tools. Insulating yourself from the wire and the ground are just as important.
...similarly, a car crash is much more dangerous than doing a random electrical adjustment.
You don't get to assume one of them fails but not the other.
> Looks to me the OP's friend is just rounding the risk on his life to zero due to normalization of deviance alone
He's rounding it to zero because it's a very low risk, just like people do with car trips.
> that kind of thing
Do I get to lump drunk driving into normal driving? It's still "that kind of thing". I think we need to look at the risk of the specific type of dangerous activity, instead of lumping it into a generic "danger" bin and ignoring car danger because you personally don't feel it qualifies as "normalization of deviance".
I think his plan was the opposite: to avoid having a path to ground, in the case his body was part of that path.
I kind of see what he's up to, though. Basically, if you touch the hot wire, or one of the screws that it's attached to, you probably get shocked. That is unavoidable; turn off the power before starting work to minimize your risk. (The risk is, of course, never zero, so do be careful even if you're sure the power is off.)
If you connect neutral first and then hot, you still get shocked if you touch the hot wire... but you also short out if the hot wire that you're screwing to the terminal touches the neutral (or ground) wire. That will cause the circuit breaker to open (or failing that, a fire), defeating the purpose of working on an energized system. So I guess this procedure is optimized for uptime, at an increased risk of death.