If the AFCI rule was a federal law or regulation, a full cost benefit analysis would have been required. This would have fully studied the rule, its costs, benefits, and lives saved. This type of study is required for any federal safety or environmental law that will cost 100 million or more to implement. The study would have cost millions of dollars and taken two to three years. Because the NEC is not a federal law, this step has never been taken. The only cost benefit analysis that we have are the very slanted ones by the AFCI manufacturers. Using the data buried in the ROPs, ROCs and fire loss reports, I believe that full compliance with the AFCI rule will prevent 14 fires in the first year at a total installation cost of over 8.7 million dollars per fire prevented. Of course this number will go down as the years go by, but even if we assume that the AFCIs will prevent 100% (even the manufacturers only expect to prevent less than 50% of the fires) of the bedroom electrical fires, after 20 years, they will have prevented a little less than 5000 fires at a total installation cost of almost one half million dollars per fire prevented. At 20 years, how many of the devices installed in the first few years of the rule will still be functional? These devices are not fail safe. When the electronics fail, the power stays on. If they would make a reasonable cost self checking fail safe AFCI, I would fully support the rule even at the very high cost per fire prevented.
