Flutterby™! : Single stairway buildings not necessarily less safe

Pew: Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record. IBC currently doesn't allow single-stairway buildings above 3 stories, which strongly dictates the building forms that we see in the US.

The two-stairway requirement makes it especially difficult to build apartments or condominiums on small or irregularly shaped pieces of land in already built-up areas (known as infill lots), which are often the main type of land available for development (or close to jobs, commerce, and schools) in expensive U.S. cities and towns.

Via this thread, which notes:

It was amazing to me how much the discussion changed in the Virginia code process once these numbers were shared. We started with heavy concern and criticism over safety and ended talking about how best to get fire deaths in Virginia to zero while ending homelessness, especially for children and families. This is not typical for a public process, and definitely not over a period of months.