[darken]

I do see where the general objection to the "current kills" comes from, even if their reasoning got a bit muddled.

All else equal, twice the voltage yields twice the current (and 4x the power).

So while yes, it's the current that kills you, in the majority of circumstances high voltage = high current. Outside of explicitly current-limited setups (e.g. a Van de Graaff generator or a desktop ionizer), most higher voltage devices will kill you more easily.

And so the "voltage doesn't kill" meme more often than not (IMO) gives laymen an undue sense of safety when working with higher voltages, at the benefit of appealing to the more electrically-inclined crowds sense of "being precisely correct".

Just look at the dozens deaths a year from people messing with microwave transformers, trying to make some pretty wood lightning art, for an example of this.

[atoav]

> in the majority of circumstances high voltage = high current

To be debated. Most of the visible (air-arcing) shocks I tend to get happen when I wear the wrong textile and given the length of the arc the voltage is well above 1 kV. So in most of the circumstances I personally encounter the current did not kill me.

What kills you is the current flow through your body. Voltage and frequency helps to produce that flow. RCDs and other protective devices help to limit that flow.

High voltage is dangerous if it has the current to back it. High voltage is also dangerous in the hands of people who don't understand the difference between current and voltage.

[bb88]

Ohm's law says:

I = V/R

It's as simple as that. A high enough voltage will find a current path ionizing the air or whatever is in it's way. A high current doesn't doesn't do that by itself.