[max599]

Most of the building code is written with the blood of victims who died in a horrific accident.

If you want to know why doors in public places have to open toward the outside in modern countries and why "panic bars" are often mandatory, the answer is large piles of dead children (literally). Depending on who you ask and the country they live in, they will refer to a different disaster, but the common element in all of them is 70 - 600 people stuck in hallways unable to escape due to bad exit designs (eg. people piling up against doors that open towards the inside).

[notch656a]

The unseen deaths are those who are unhoused or unsheltered due to building codes causing elevated building prices. Secondary effects (for those who can afford up-to-code) include less money to spend on healthy foods, good health insurance, quality child education, and other victimized children at the hand of building codes and other regulation.

You can virtually ramp up building codes ad-infinitum, until the house is as safe as can humanly be built, if your expense is to hurt a lot of children by bankrupting families of expenses to take care of other necessities in life.