In the States, we love our safety regulations -- even when they don't make us any safer at all.
Apparently, most jurisdictions in the US require small apartment buildings to have to staircases in order to allow for fire escape.
Apparently the assumption was that a single stairway wasn't safe. This assumption resulted in a 13% increase in building costs.
Thankfully, the people at PEW checked that assumption and found out that single staircase apartment buildings didn't have worse outcomes in fires.
Essentially nobody in the last century in the US checked if 2 staircases are necessary for apartment buildings until 2021. Now a dozen states have changed. Which is pretty insane. -Alex Armlovich
And now the City of Austin is legalizing single staircase designs for buildings up to 5 storeys. It's cool how much Texas lets people build.