> I'm often surprised when posters identify themselves as "European" which encompasses such a broad range of cultures, biotypes, and ecosystems that it makes any comparison of the US way vs the European way virtually impossible.

Many people in Europe do indeed identify as European. This has become more and more prevalent as people increasingly move around in Europe. I'd also argue that you are ignoring the cultural differences in the US (e.g. New Jersey vs Utah) something which I find Europeans are often guilty of.

> That said, when looking at the reasons for fire safety in the U.S., there are many factors to consider which may or may not apply in parts of Europe

> -- Frequency of wildfires. They are not uncommon in my southwest corner, so fire safety is taken very seriously

We are talking about multi (>4) story, multi family apartment buildings, how are wildfires relevant?

> -- Proximity of emergency services. It can't be assumed that the local fire department is a few minutes drive away

Again we are not talking about requirements for some cottage in the woods, these are city buildings. The whole argument is for buildings where you have space constraints.

> -- Building materials. Materials that are fire-proof are rarely earthquake proof.

Again I don't see the relevance, we are talking about a national building code, but only a tiny fraction of US cities are earthquake zones. The article also asserts that most Asian countries (which presumably includes Japan) have only one stairwell requirements.

> Any of these may or may not apply in any particular case but "embafflement" seems pretty extreme.

I actually agree if one needs to grasp for straws like these for reasons for the 2 stairwell rule, it is pretty baffling. The article actually nicely described the history and why it's outdated.

The point was that Europe has all of these but no double staircases.

Don’t want to comment on missing emergency services in densely built areas but hope it isn’t the case it’s so bad you need an extra flight of stairs.

Of course, as you allude, the US is a large and diverse country too, where those features may or may not apply in a given locality.

I suspect, though, that on both continents, when we’re talking about these problems with the dual staircase requirement in this context, we’re talking mainly about relatively high-density developments in space-constrained urban settings.

If, as the article claims, we’ve arrived at comparable fire fatality rates under the two policy regimes, it does seem like their prevailing standards neatly capture a tradeoff: it seems like you can add safety either by socializing a fire response infrastructure capable of quicker response, or you can privatize that extra margin of safety by imposing these second staircase costs on individual developments. I’d be curious how the total costs add up, I’m almost inclined to donate to the guy’s nonprofit just to get the answer to that.

I’d be curious how these changes would affect the economics of apartment blocks on huge greenfield suburban tracts, where parking requirements rather than staircase requirements seem to be the limiting factor space-wise. I’m thinking of the kind where space is cheap enough that they do surface lots rather than building parking decks into the structure. It seems like they tack exterior staircases on the edges of the building at not too much extra cost in those situations, but I suppose the floor plan implications must still come to bear.

> -- Frequency of wildfires. They are not uncommon in my southwest corner, so fire safety is taken very seriously

There is finally progress on building codes for wildfire safety (called “WUI” codes).

It still has missing bits. For example, try to find a standard for a building air intake in an area subject to wildfires.

Because of the European Union there's a lot more of common standards and regulations concerning things like buildings between European Countries than there are between American States.

Also, a lot more stuff is codified by law or treaties instead of by business and trade associations.

So, on this matter, it makes a lot of sense of speaking about the European experience.

It's the same for many European cities and towns. Many cities started to reduce it down to 0.5 parking spaces per flat or less, because many of those parking spaces tend to be empty in bigger cities. And just increase prices for housing.

We’ve really done a number to cater to cars and the auto industry in the United States. Some More News does a great job on outlining the history of cars, roads, and what can be done to make things better - https://youtu.be/sayw3TOhykg

The requirement is because if you don't mandate a minimum amount of parking, developers won't create it. Then the neighbors of your fancy new building can no longer find parking near their own home because the new building tenants take it. So they justifiably get angry and start voting in politicians that will enforce minimum capacity for new development.

Yes, housing and web cookies, equally important for one's life.

There is one solution for the cookie notices that is very seldomly talked about: just don't use any marketing cookies, then you don't need consent from the user :)

Another European here: I think the law is fine. How companies, specially US companies react to it, that is not.

1. A ton of Health related websites in US refuse to work in Europe, because they are NOT willing to let you visit without sensitive data being grabbed with cookies. I truly do not understand how US people are ok with this.

2. The law says that you can't make hard to refuse cookies, yet many US-based sites I visit have shady, shady practices, for example many you have to click a button to see all the sliders for individual cookies, and when you click that button, it switches the orders of the buttons, so that the button you just clicked become "accept all", and the previous "accept all" button becomes "save current settings". Thus if you double click/tap by accident you accept all.

3. The sites that most often piss me off with shady cookie banner that tries its hardest to force you to opt-in to tracking, are ones that use a company called "Admiral", that according to LinkedIn is from Florida. https://www.linkedin.com/company/getadmiral/

That ain't us.... kind of. That's the websites deciding to follow the letter of the law (or a spiteful, capitalist interpretation, taking it right to the line) instead of the spirit of the law.

OK, unintended consequences of legislation. But those cookie banners are not mandated, exactly. They don't need to be there. It's the companies deciding to do it that way, so they can keep gobbling data.

It's like if the building companies implemented the 2nd staircase, but only so they could measure who is going up and down it. Not for saving lives.

If they were opt in, or unnecessary tracking wasn't implemented in the first place, then the banners could be elegant or gone.

But I do agree that the legislation (especially the ultra focus on cookies specifically) was... blinkered & short sighted.

The year is 3157. Each time you access a new resource on the shared data substrate, you are required to accept something called a "Cookie." You have no idea what they are or why. Your crewmates say it has something to do with the homeworld, but you just shrug and prepare for the hyperspace jump.

NYC stopped building fire escapes a long time ago. There are still tons of them, but all on older buildings.

It certainly would be interesting to see them make a comeback though.

Maybe I should say I’m from abroad instead? European seems to trigger something in some folks around here.

That aside, I fail to see any cultural or other reason to require twin staircases nowadays other than ‘that’s how we always did it here’. I admit it openly and state that I’m from somewhere where we don’t do that, and the world works just as well, except buildings have a higher useful to total area ratio.

Second staircases are pretty good. I think most people should have them if they can afford them.

Fire deaths per 100k in 2019:

US .82

UK .38

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates

That had little to do with stairs, but it was caused by the use of inappropriate combustible materials, which were forbidden for buildings of that height in many countries of continental Europe, but they were allowed in Great Britain were regulations were much more lax.

So that event is strictly specific to UK and not representative for Europe in general.

That was due to missing stairs? And there is a difference between skyscrapers and 3-6 story multi-apartment buildings where in the worst case you can even exit fine with fire truck ladders or assisted jumps, but the article says even required for those, which would really feel ridiculous for those kind of buildings here. No need to be salty, we find each other alien on many levels :D