These gimmicks of marketing hubris will not prevent a single fire. They were literally (in their full entirety) created to emulate the advantages of the British wiring system in a country where code legally lets you run circuits beyond a length which a short circuit will trip a breaker. They are now being touted as providing advanced fire protection in the IEC world when in reality the IEC standards have already been providing complete line to neutral and line to earth arc fault protection for at least the last 40-60 years.
This leaves series arcing claims, where arcing is the end stage, not the initiating trigger of joule heating- assuming building material has not already ignited. The down falls are furthered in that commercial AFCIs lack the computing power to accurately detect series arcing phenomenon due to a limited number of computing power having to take into account normal high frequency ripples produced by brush motors and switched mode power supplies.
Their spread has only come from manufacturer and IEC UL committee influence on the development of codes and standards.
I feel sorry for the misfeasance and malfeasance humanity lets itself endure...
