I went to war with a local inspector who tried to stop me from using PVC as a riser pipe on a house where the drop was supported by the house, well he couldn't by state code, so he tried to get the utility to put in their standards to not allow PVC, so I called the Indiana utility commission and they told the utility that if they want to pay for the extra cost of using RMC instead of PVC then they would be more then welcome to require RMC, well you can guess how far that went. if they can not prove there is any safety problems with a wiring method and they are not footing the bill, then they have no right to dictate a wiring method that is allowed by code.
I use PVC because not only is it safer, it is much easier and faster to restore power to a house when a tree has taken the service down, with PVC much less damage is done and it will usually snap off right at the male adapter leaving the male adapter to protect against having the un-protected service wire from shorting out to the meter can, or shorting out from the riser pipe being bent over, or the meter can from being ripped off the wall.
I don't care how well you try to prevent a service from being torn off a building, a tree limb weighing 500 to 1,000 pounds will not stop till it hits the ground, your not going to prevent it, so the best way is to allow it, but in the safest way possible, sure I would like to see utility's to use a pull away type connection at the pole, but your not going to get them to spend the money, so I just use a method that is easy to repair and get power back on for the least amount of cost to the owner.
I had one house that had many old oak trees in his yard that at some time in the past two or three times a year a limb would come down and tear out the service drop, the home owner got creative (or so he thought) and had the electrician bolt through the gable wall and through a 4x4 that went all the way across the gable end of the attic, when one of the heavy oak limbs came down it not only took the service off the wall but ripped out the entire end of the house, you could look right in and see inside, over $70,000 dollars in damage, now try to explain that to your insurance company. he had heard of my easy break-away type install and had me use the PVC method (after they rebuilt the wall)
