I managed to reverse my hot and neutral wires going into a cutler afci once and of course it made funny noise and did not work correctly. I say this to point out one thing. I find they are quite reliable as far as not tripping just so long as the installer slows down to make sure there is no cross neutrals, ground wires touching neutrals, or in the case I did just plain old speeding and not paying attention. If you think about it these miswiring details are not supposed to be done whether there is an afci in the circuit or not. Since I began to install afci's I notice i sure pay more attention to the way my wires fold back into boxes . Firestopping issues aside, they certainly help to lessen sloppy install work.
