There have been significant safety improvements in the equipment that distribute the electricity around your home. Historically the protection has been against short circuit or overload faults in the form of fuse wire which in turn were first replaced with cartridge fuses (mostly for convenience) then by mechanical switches in the form of circuit breakers (MCB).
Modern consumer units (fuse boards as they used to be known) have a significant improvement in safety with the fitting of Residual Current Devices (RCD) which provide much greater protection against electric shock .
More detail from the Electrical Safety Council can be found here
AOS Electrical 