I turn a lot of crap off, but it never dawned on me to do so for safety reasons. The risks are still lower than the risk of me riding in a car. No, the reason I do it is because I don’t want to waste electricity. If I’m gone, I’m gonna be gone a while. No need leaving crap running the whole time.
I have electric everything, so I’m not really that scared about my dryer. I guess I wouldn’t leave my stove on, but, honestly, the concept of doing so never occurred to me. I’ve never even heard of people unplugging any stationary appliances.
I don’t leave the house with the washing machine on, but that’s just because I like to hang up my laundry as soon as it’s done. (We don’t have a drier, unfortunately - they are rare in Korea.)
Oven, definitely not, unless I’m going to be out of the house for less than 5-10 minutes.
Actually I don’t leave anything on except the fridge and the heater when I leave the house. I don’t unplug anything though. My boyfriend, on the other hand, is obsessive about turning off our main power strip (in the living room, where the TV, lamp, consoles, etc are all plugged in) even when we go to bed.
I never really worried about heading out with the dishwasher until (2 separate times and locations,) a nipple from a baby bottle and a 2 oz bottle got shuffled off of their holders and ended up burning up on the heating unit! Smoky, smelly, scary! Others have pretty much convinced me that there never would have been a fire; nothing to burn, no oxygen. But both times there sue was a lot of smell and smoke!
From all the answers here, I guess if everyone turned off everything when they left the house, then a lot of firemen would lose their jobs because we wouldn’t need most of them anymore.
I’ll leave the fridge, freezer, computer, crockpot, electric roaster, dishwasher, washer, and dryer running when I leave the house. Not the TV though, and especially not the stove or the iron.