Hacker News Reader

Comment by VincentEvans | Hacker News Reader

They sold 1,500,000 units and there were 23 fires. I am happy they are so on the ball with this - but is this really the kind of risk one needs to worry about? 652,173 to 1. I just looked it up, and my odds of being in a car accident are 366 to 1 for every 1,000 miles driven. So 366,000 to 1 for every mile. Twice as dangerous as this dehumidifier.

Edit: off by a zero, so my conclusions are weaker than i originally thought.

View on HN

Comparing it to one of the leading causes of accidental death is not exactly a testament to their safety.

Consider some other product safety issue -- for example, the GM ignition switch recall. 30 million vehicles were affected, and there were 124 deaths.

Or the Takata Airbag recalls -- 67 million vehicles were affected and there were 27 deaths and 400 injuries.

I think the most important part of a consumer safety issue is whether or not the product has a design defect with a known engineering solution that causes injury. It's not really fair to compare these deaths to chance deaths, like car accidents resulting from human err.

Well the rate of them catching fire is increasing, which means older ones are failing

Good point. And all units sold aren’t necessarily in active use. In some areas they may only be used on occasion.

I'd be curious to know how many of the units that caught fire never had the filter cleaned, were used in a dusty area, or otherwise poorly maintained.

You'd be surprised at how many people never change their furnace filter (or even know it exists).

I how many failures are left unreported. That is dead units with some signs of burning.

If they don't recall these units will keep working in the field and racking up more avoidable deaths. Would that really be preferable?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com