[pmorici]

So do you practice what you preach and carry one of these with you where ever you go, or in your vehicle? If not then why do you feel the government should impose that on a business? Why not make a law that says every business has to have a trained EMT on site during business hours. I'm sure that would save even more lives...

[Xylakant]

We have that. In germany the Berufsgenossenschaft mandates that every company with more than 2 and up to 20 employees has at least 1 person trained in first aid on site. Companies larger than that need 5% - 10% of the personal trained, depending on what work is done.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfallverh%C3%BCtungsvorschrift...

[btilly]

What is the consequence if 3 co-founders start a company, and only find out about this requirement a year later?

See item 7 of http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html to know why I asked it.

[Xylakant]

Good question.

* First: It's employees. Founders don't need to be employees. In fact, I'd say most are not.

* Second: You have to go through a basic first-aid course when you get your drivers license. So most people actually are basically trained. I think you have to refresh that course every two years to comply with the regulation, but that's a refresher only. It's really a basic first-aid class that's required if you're a small company.

* Third: This is the kind of regulation where you get a slap on the hand the first time you violate it. So I'd assume the answer is "Basically nothing"

Btw: Paul Grahams view on the regulations in germany is a bit outdated. SAP started in a garage. And you don't need 20k to start a startup. You need 25.000 Euro to form a GmbH which is one kind of a LLC. There's a lot of reasons why big startups mainly happen in the USA, but the garage issue is none of them.

[pmorici]

Right, and that is probably a negligible cost as you can get first aid training for free in a lot of places. The point is the op is advocating that businesses be required to buy expensive equipment that they themselves probably wouldn't be willing to spend the money on.

[Xylakant]

I need to pay that persons training, the wage for the lost day of work once a year. The training cost itself is negligible, but a day not billed to a customer costs me ~ 800 USD. I can nearly pay an AED for that.

However, given that a colleague nearly died from a stroke (he completely recovered) and another colleague permanently failed to show up for work after a bike crash, I think that having more people solidly trained in emergency procedures can't be a bad thing. And a one-time investment for medical equipment mandated for companies from a certain size on might be a good thing to consider.

[Xylakant]

Actually if you read the OPs statement twice, you'll realize that he just voices his surprise that no AED was on site and does not advocate anything.

[subsystem]

In a normal office you wouldn't need more than one AED per 50+ employees. That's an insignificant cost.